Street Parking Curbs Mean More Red Tape, Expense

El Monte is in a financial crisis, and it is easy to understand why. With the city’s services being threatened with cutbacks, the City Council can’t seem to find enough ways to add to the bureaucracy.

During these lean times when the council should be conserving, like pork barrel politicians, they’re looking to add more cumbersome red tape.

Poorly advertised because the council “wants to cut costs” (translation: Don’t let the public know what we’re doing), the El Monte council is currently working to limit street parking one day each week for street cleaning.

Just like in big city Los Angeles, parking will only be allowed on one side of the street in the morning, then the other side in the afternoon. Should you forget to move during the one-hour transition period, you get an instant parking ticket!

Naturally, these tickets are going to be very expensive to help the city partially recover some of the costs of the daily police patrols, city processing costs, court processing fees, and tens of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars for the thousands of signs for which the Department of Public Works will have to pay city employees for thousands of hours to post and maintain.

Naturally, whatever costs the tickets don’t cover, the taxpayers will. Interestingly, in days of high crime, the City Council feels that the Police Department is better suited following around street sweepers.

There may be a few isolated cases where the council’s proposed restrictions may be helpful, but a citywide infringement upon the residents is hardly necessary nor prudent.

TOM SINGER

El Monte