Well, sort of. I met with Tad McDowell at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas the other day and as we walked out of his office, I took this picture:
Note the blue meters in front of blue disabled parking spots. I asked Tad about them and he sent me this explanation:
When arriving at UNLV there seemed to be a very large number of handicap spaces, most of which were being used. This seemed really out of the ordinary compared to other places I had been and understood that it had been that way for some time. Through monitoring of the spaces and calling tag numbers into the DMV we would fine and boot those individuals using tags that did not belong to them. After exercising this practice for a few years it didn’t seem to solve the problem. We determined that the primary reason for the abuse was because it was free and was a way to get out buying a campus permit.
We acquired a recommendation from the Parking Advisory Committee to establish a permit and fee, which was later approved by our administration. It was then determined that not only do we need to do this, but we also had to establish a fee for visitors as well, otherwise, the abuse would continue. To address this issue, meters were installed at each handicap parking space along with a sign. The sign states that without a campus handicap permit the meter must have time placed on it. The state handicap permit or placard must be in the vehicle at all times along with the meter usage or the campus permit. When a faculty member, staff member, or student comes in to purchase the handicap permit, they have to provide a copy of their state placard and the letter they received when acquiring it. This is then kept on file.
By doing this, we increased our handicap open space count during the day by 150%.
See, it works. The problem with abuse of handicapped placards basically goes away when you charge for the space. Tad charged non university personnel for the space (but you still needed a state issued permit) and didn’t charge if they had a university issued permit, but they strictly controlled those permits, requiring a person have BOTH a state issued permit and a university issued permit.
To solve this problem you have to make the financial benefit of having such a permit go away.Period
JVH
