I have been musing about how cities can make parking more attractive to their citizens when I came across an article describing a new potential law in DC that would allow the parking department to deputize private citizens to write parking tickets. My question is “why?”
If there is a dearth of tickets, then why not hire more enforcement officers. Its not as if they don’t pay their own way. Has there been complaints from the citizenry that not enough parking tickets are being written? I don’t’ think so.
This request seemed to come from the city council. Is it remotely possible that there is a dollar sign somewhere in the explanation? Could it be that the council wanted more income without the countercost of paying PEOs?
Just what kind of person is going to volunteer their time to write parking tickets. I know a couple of bozos on my block that would sign up in a heartbeat, but I wouldn’t trust to be fair and balanced at all. Frankly I might try to find a way to write a ticket for that junker pickup parked in front of my house.
Trying to raise the level of compliance is hard enough without having a bunch of parking vigilantes running around out there. I note from the article that they are going to be trained in conflict resolution. I’ll bet there will be a lot of conflict to resolve.
It seems like just one more stupid idea that will rain hell fire and damnation down on the parking industry.
JVH
