New York’s mayor Bloomberg has vetoed the ordinance which would provide free parking in the city on Sunday. Local Churches have complained that their parishioners have to leave church to feed meters. The mayor countered that the city needed the money to help fill their budget deficit.
I think the mayor did the right thing for the wrong reasons. What he should do is cut the costs of city government, and then take the money generated from parking and put it back into the neighborhoods from which it came, not into that black hole known as the general fund.
As I have said before, the churches would line up to pay for parking if the money provided better street scapes, lighting, garbage collection, parks and security in the neighborhoods.
JVH
One Response
“As I have said before, the churches would line up to pay for parking if the money provided better street scapes, lighting, garbage collection, parks and security in the neighborhoods.”
This is in response to your snotty remarks in the PT Magazine, echoed by your snotty remark above from the blog. How many churches did you survey before twice making this allegation? Lemme guess: none. It’s just libel.
Do you honestly believe that ministers would prefer that worship services be interrupted so worshipers can feed meters to provide city-financed landscaping around their parishes? This may play well with the irreligious element among your readership, but it is a ridiculous calumny if only on a practical level.
Have you noticed that churches and Christian relief organizations have run to the rescue of Hurricane Katrina’s victims, while so far, unless I have missed it, not a peep has been uttered from the parking industry about its relief efforts. I guess that means that people involved in the parking industry are only selfish boors, you know, like those ministers whom you slander.
Metered parking within reasonable distances of churches and synagogues is indeed nothing but a tax on religion, often on those who can least afford it – the poor who worship in urban settings.
When will governments ever decide that they, rather than the overtaxed citizenry, must learn to live with less rather than constantly wringing more and more revenue out of us?
You have taken a serious issue and trivialized it to suit your apparent need to heap disdain on something with which you are obviously unfamiliar – worship of God. Or maybe you have made parking revenues into a deity that must be propitiated at all costs.