It’s no secret that parking in Boston can be difficult. But some people just gotta get around, and they can’t wait for a legal parking space to open up. And when those people happen to work for the city, they get cut a little more slack — they can park in no-parking zones and not bother feeding meters while they’re in a city-owned vehicle.
But that apparently isn’t good enough for some of them. They want to park in front of hydrants, on crosswalks, in handicapped spots, bus stops, or no stopping/standing zones.
The city, by some miracle, came up with a common-sense solution: workers would be responsible for any parking tickets they incur. But that was just too reasonable, so they decided to not bother enforcing that rule. Now they find themselves stuck with over $26,000 in unpaid parking tickets that it owes itself.
And here’s a real taste of irony — the most flagrant offender (and the only one named) is Joe Kelly, who’s got 30 unpaid tickets under his belt. They’re mostly for parking in a no stopping/standing zone. Mr. Kelly is the city’s Director of Off-Street Parking Facilities. You’d think if ANYONE could find a place to park, it’d be him…
I don’t have the best of records in predictions, but I’m gonna go out on a limb this time. I’m gonna say that within a couple of weeks, a couple of guys will receive public reprimands and the city will end up eating nearly all the 26 grand. In fact, nearly 12 grand has already been tossed out. And in a year or two, it’ll happen all over again.
‘Cuz that’s just the way it is in Beantown.
J.
Deja vu, deja vu, boston, two.
When I was in the Army in Korea, I ran a tactical operations center that was manned 24 hours a day. In it was one of the few phones that could place overseas calls. It came to pass that the Army received an outrageously large phone bill for long distance calls to the states. The post commander was irate and ordered an investigation into it. A certain amount of it came from some of my guys who thought that they were making collect calls becase the first number of the US international code is 0. They had been calling their moms and wives and girlfriends thinking that they were picking up the tab.
However, the number one offender turned out to be…..the post commander. He had been calling his wife and daughter back in the States (knowing full well what he was doing) on a regular basis(for over a year). It was only when the volume of calls caused the bill to get too high that someone noticed. In the end, he announced that as long as everyone paid the Army back for the cost of the calls, no one would be punished.
How generous of him.
Once I got a ticket for going 105mph and I was actually going 115mph… my son was in the back seat and he was trying to explain how I was actually going faster than that! I paid my ticket! My son is a brat!…
“And in a year or two, it’ll happen all over again.”
Do you think?