Parking Permit Pros and Cons

The heavy hand of City Hall once again proposes to harass the citizens of the city. The citizens don’t desire or need to be chased from their street parking spaces at night. But City Hall, in its infinite wisdom, wants to inflict this dastardly harassment and to collect a fee so as to increase the city employment.

If there were an off-street space available, a resident would gladly use it to get away from the graffiti, vandalism and risk of a stolen auto, a problem brought on by the City Council with its loose commercial and multifamily building policy over the past 10 or more years. Has any graffiti painter been arrested?

Not for street sweeping at midnight! Who wants to be awakened at 3 a.m. by a roaring sweeping machine? Most cars are off the street in the daytime when sweeping is done every two weeks or less often. People do go to work elsewhere. Even for this, the citizens are harassed by being required to vacate a street once a week.

Residents keep the peace by parking their cars on the street and thus not making them available for nighttime revelers to use them while they occupy bars, restaurants, et al., until 2 a.m., then litter and wake up the neighborhood as they depart. Is this parking policy aimed at supporting the bars?

Divide and conquer! Pick on one small area first, then another, then another--each so the rage of citizens will not be too loud and can thus be ignored.

Nothing positive is attained. The citizen is harassed, the car owner is harassed and assessed, the city squeezes more money out of the citizen, the city establishment grows unnecessarily, another attack is made on the citizens’ freedom.

WAYNE S. DODDS, Glendale