Last Saturday I complained about the practice of ticketing people at
Minneapolis park parking lots for not having permits when they
couldn't buy the permits.
On Tuesday a park administrator sent me this reply:
Until the lot has the daily fee machines
installed, it is a patron
permit lot unless it is staffed by a parking
attendant. If you park
in a patron lot without a season pass and there
is not an attendant on duty, you will be ticketed.
This condition will exist until the daily fee
machine is installed (within 10-14 days).
So until the machines are installed, it would be business as
usual, and people would continue to be ticketed for not having
permits when they can't buy permits.
I thought the threat was an interesting literary flourish.
This was my response:
It is shameful that you are continuing
your parking trap. I never
thought the park system could sink so low.
You won't get the chance to ticket me.
I abandoned your parking lots
years ago, because too many cars
got their windows smashed in.
My response was the Minnesota equivalent of "You'll never take me
alive".
But it was all bluff. In fact, I knew the park system would have
its chance to get me that very Friday. We had scheduled a
neighborhood organizer's picnic at Minnehaha Falls - before we knew
about the park system's parking scheme. I decided to park my car
on a side street, but pull into the lot to unload supplies.
Friday morning I looked at the Minnehaha parking lot the way
Pickett's charge must have looked at union lines at Gettysburg. Of
course there was nobody selling permits. I also saw no police.
Knowing that it would take less than ten minutes to unload the
barbecue supplies from my car, and that otherwise I would have to
lug heavy coolers full of food over Minnehaha Creek or across two
roads of traffic, I decided to do the evil deed and pull into the
lot.
I waddled with my first heavy cooler over to a picnic table. I
turned around, and I couldn't believe my eyes. A d----d cop was
hovering around my car, and pulling out his pen and pad. Was he
hiding in the bushes? did he pop out of a trash can? Did he
materialize out of a transporter beam?
Yelling "don't do it", I leapt over bushes and flowers in my dash
back to the car. A scowling officer watched as I jumped into my
car, cranked the engine, threw the gears into reverse, and prepared
to peel out of the parking lot.
Just then two buses from St. Something-or-Other church creaked into
the lot and parked directly behind my car. For over five minutes
two busloads of senior citizens disembarked, along with their
canes, walkers, and wheelchairs.
I was trapped like a rat. The officer's scowl turned to a smile as
he admired my license plate. Finally he decided to show some mercy,
and moved on to the next car.
Once I made my escape I hid my car on a side street. But now I was
on a mission to save humanity. Dodging my way through two lines of
traffic, I raced back to the park, dragging a clanking Weber grill
behind me.
I burst into the pavilion and warned everybody that the police were
ticketing cars, and they should be moved. The purple-haired punks
Jostled with the blue-haired ladies through the doors as everyone
stampeded into the parking lot.
I then ran down to the falls, and warned everybody there. Even
though I knew no Japanese, the tourists got the message and joined
the race to the parking lot.
Finally, one woman said "Do I have to move my car even if I got a
ticket from the machine?"
I walked up to the parking lot, and indeed a permit dispensing
machine had been installed that very day. While many of the people
had not purchased permits, and I had saved them from a ticket, I
felt bad that I told people to move their cars when they didn't
have to.
But guilt turned to a certain sense of redemption later in the
barbecue, when people looked at their permits. The permit clock
was set two hours early and the tickets were good for only two
hours. This meant that every permit was expired the moment it was
purchased.
The ever vigilant/carnivorous park police had spent much of the
last two hours ticketing everybody who had expired permits - which
meant everybody in the park. The only people who escaped were the
people who took my advice and moved their cars.
----------------------------------------------------------
The permit machines at Nokomis are an improvement. But there are
still some major problems.
First, they are fairly inconspicuous. they look like newspaper
dispensing machines. I knew what I was looking for, and I had to
walk right up to the machine and look at it to know what it was.
Plenty of people will have no idea from a distance what it is.
The only people likely to come into direct contact with the
machines are those who park in the lot and head straight for the
bathrooms. Anybody parking at the north end and going to the
playground, or parking at the south end and going to the canoes, or
parking at either end and heading straight onto the beach, will
miss the machines.
Directions are only in English. But on weekends and on holidays,
close to half the people at Nokomis main beach are Latino. There
is also a healthy sprinkling of East Africans. Hmong come too,
but they are usually there for the fishing, and are scattered
around the lake.
This means that at times maybe half the adults cannot read the
fairly intricate instructions.
Putting a machine at the entrance, maybe with a gate is the best
way to make sure everybody sees how to get a permit and avoid a
ticket. This might cause a traffic backlog, but I am sure that the
park system can figure out a way around it.
---------------------------------------------------------
On Tuesday I was informed that the unfair ticketing would continue
another 10 days to two weeks. Yet The first machines were in place
by that Friday. Some may wonder why the park service suddenly moved
at top speed. Was it out of compassion for the parkgoers? Was it to
be nice to me?
I don't think so. Something else happened that I think convinced
the park system to move as fast as they possibly could.
On Wednesday, the park commissioners learned that this issue had
attracted the attention of some people from the Star Tribune.
When the primary concern was unfair ticketing of park patrons, the
park system moved like molasses, and it was perfectly acceptable to
let the unfair ticketing go on for two more weeks.
When the primary concern switched to saving the park system from
some embarrassing publicity, suddenly the parks jumped like
jackrabbits, and the first machines went up within 48 hours.
More than one person told me that this is the type of issue - a
lumbering, seemingly unaccountable government entity instituting
policies oblivious to the impact these policies have on people -
that turns people into Republicans.
I was angry about the policy. But if someone had said to me "We
didn't intend these difficulties, but now that we see how this
policy is causing problems for people, we will take immediate steps
to correct it." I would have been satisfied, and I might even have
applauded the responsiveness of the park system. It was the
reaction - no justification, no acknowledgement of a problem,
simply an announcement that the policy would continue until the
machines were installed - that really stunned and disappointed me,
and leaves a bad taste in my mouth even as something has been done
to improve the situation.
Annie Young brought this issue to the attention of the other park
commissioners. She was absolutely the most concerned and the most
responsive. John Erwin said early on that he wanted to make sure
people had a chance to purchase permits before being ticketed.
Then it was run silent run deep as all the other commissioners
allowed an administrator to do the talking for them.
TEMPORARY REMINDER:
1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait.
2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject
(Mpls-specific, of course.)
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