‘We’re just not fast enough,’ city says
By A. FIXTURE Daily Planet Slave
In a “cutting edge” move to fill the city coffers, officials have decided to triple the number of parking enforcers on area streets.
Herb Walknomore, director of the city’s parking citation bureau, appeared before the city council last week to testify that his staff is too small to catch the rampant disobedience of parking rules going on throughout the city.
“We’re just not fast enough,” said Walknomore. “Right now there are meters that haven’t been paid, there are cars that have been left on side streets way longer than the maximum two hour limit, and even on my way here tonight, I saw cars parked in 15-minute loading and unloading lanes far longer than they should have been.”
Walknomore wants to double his paltry staff of 450 metermaids, parking enforcement officers and bureaucrats to well over a thouand in order to assign one parking enforcement officer for every five city blocks.
With a high saturation of enforcement Walkonomore said, “nobody will dare to park irresponsibly” in Slanta Monica.
The cost of tripling the parking enforcement office staff will cost almost $13 million, but Walknomore said the city can recoup part of the cost by creating preferential parking districts on every block in the city and charging residents $1,250 annually for city parking permits.
“It’s the price they’ll have to pay for the peace of mind that comes with knowing your vehicle is safe from ticketing,” Walknomore said on April 1, a traditional day for pranks.
Walknomore also encouraged the city to raise the amount charged for parking tickets. Illegally parking on a side street during street cleaning should be a $100 fine, not feeding a meter should be an $80 fine, while illegally parking in a loading and unloading zone should be a $85 ticket, he said.
The higher parking tickets will help offset the cost of more parking attendants, as well as act as a deterrent to any scofflaw, Walknomore said.
The city council unanimously approved Walknomore’s proposal, hoping the improved parking enforcement staff would be able to handle the large number of parking violations that go on in Slanta Monica in a single day.
“This is a fine proposal, and I wish somebody would have tried something like this years ago,” said Councilman Bob Wholeriver. “Actually, I think we should be hiring even more parking enforcement staff so that when any one meter expires
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2002. Read the original PDF.