Tow Trucks to Lower Boom on Scofflaws

Scofflaws beware. Starting in July, San Diego parking controllers will be armed with hand-sized computer gizmos.

As they write you a parking ticket, they’ll punch in your license number. If you have five or more unpaid tickets, lights will flash and a tow truck can be summoned.

To reclaim your car, you’ll have to pay your tickets, a late penalty and a towing fee.

Unpaid tickets are serious fiscal stuff in San Diego: There are about 10,000 vehicles with five or more tickets, totaling $3.6 million in fines and penalties. This in a city that is threatening to cut back on recreation programs and library hours for lack of money.

To ease the shock, the City Council on Monday is set to designate June as Parking Citation Amnesty Month. Tickets can be paid at face value, with penalties.

Along with eliminating the cumbersome need to lug around lengthy lists of repeat offenders, the computer system is seen as having another salutary effect: improving the morale of parking controllers.

Next to being called meter maids, nothing bums out the scooter-riding controllers like knowing that a lot of their tickets are just a waste of paper. If all goes well, that will change.

Vacations Born Again

Christmas and Easter are making a comeback in Vista.

A minister and a leader of a Christian political group petitioned the school board to scuttle a year-old policy of using the terms winter and spring vacation. The policy was meant to avoid any religious overtones.

“If the schools can celebrate Halloween, which was originally a celebration of devils and witches, we see no reason that Christmas and Easter cannot be mentioned,” said Helen Rocha, a school bus driver and leader in the Christian Voters League, which includes 300 families in Vista.

The board agreed, and the old terms will soon return.

Back on the Map

Update: Rand McNally will include Cardiff-by-the-Sea in its 1990 Road Atlas.

After being dropped from the 1989 edition, Cardiff pleaded for reconsideration. To community activists, disappearing from the atlas is the civic equivalent of looking into the mirror and not seeing a reflection.

The giant map maker relented after discovering that Cardiff has its own freeway signs and post office.

Long Arm of the Bar

Almost five years after the fact, former Poway city attorney Jean Leonard Harris has been publicly scolded by the California Supreme Court for an illegal land sale.

Without comment, the court ordered Harris “publicly reproved,” a punishment less severe than disbarment or suspension but more serious than a private scolding. He will also be required to pass an exam within a year.

A referee for the State Bar, who investigated the case, had recommended that Harris be suspended from practicing law for 30 days. The justices rejected that suggestion.

Harris was the $63,000-a-year attorney for a newly elected slow-growth council in the early 1980s when his private land dealings went sour. “Jean caught a bad case of real estate fever,” says a former colleague.

By the time the fever broke, Harris had resigned, and a real estate company he formed had filed for bankruptcy.

He pleaded guilty in July, 1984 to a misdemeanor count (plea-bargained down from a felony) of selling a large chunk of land without telling the buyers it was heavily indebted and not cleared for development. He was put on probation and ordered to pay $49,528 in restitution.

His $15-million civil-rights suit against the district attorney was thrown out of court.

Harris, 50, has been city attorney for Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs for five years. In 1986 his legal past became an issue in a City Council election in Rancho Mirage, a fact that he blames for reheating the State Bar’s interest in his case.

“It disgusts me that it takes them that long to decide what to do,” Harris said. “A lawyer really has no rights in the state of California in the way they can be dealt with by the State Bar. It’s not fair that I have to keep reliving this thing.”