One of the two sisters who made parking more interesting in Anchorage has died.
According to a TV station in Alaska:
Linny Pacillo, one of two sisters who used humor to fight the Anchorage, Alaska,
parking authority, has died at the age of 47.
Pacillo and her sister, Susan Pacillo, dressed in pink tutus and black tights
to become the parking fairies who wedged coins into meters. Their campaign in
the 1990s helped inspire a 1997 referendum that limited handing out parking
tickets to sworn police officers, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
She had muscular dystrophy and some complication from an automobile accident a few years ago.
I don’t remember these women, but I do member some issues with Anchorage and the parking authority. Its not quite as straight forward as it seems above. The parking authority took over the issuance of tickets simply because the police were doing it. Let’s face it if you could go out and bust a few drunks and hookers, would you stop along the way to put a ticket on a car that was five minutes over its limit…
However I think the Anchorage group did get a little over zealous, in some cases giving tickets to people parked in the own driveways, and in residential areas.
We know that the power to issue a citation is the power to destroy. Citations must be issued within the law, consistently, and with some compassion. Lets face it, ticketing an ambulance in front of a hospital, or a priest who has just run in to give last rites, or a mom with a baby running in to buy a quart of milk during a rain storm, is not the best way to go. I’m not saying that Anchorage was over the top, but my guess was that the money was being used for something other than new infrastructure, street lights, parks, and the like. Can anyone say "general fund."
And even if the citation money was going to build new structures, I wonder if the population knew it.
God Bless you Linnie
JVH
