Friday, January 13, 2012
I woke up this morning to sunshine – at least for a few hours it took me to get to work.
It seems I’ve been soaked through for so many days over the last week that I’m beginning to feel more comfortable than dry and warm.
I walk to Hoboken these days because I can’t afford any more tickets the city is apt to supply me with whenever I park on the street.
Hoboken has always been a problem for workers like me. Back when I was a truck driver making deliveries and pickups on Washington Street in the 1970s, cops used to hound me about parking in the bus stop in front of the beauty supply store.
In those days, it was good to have the cops around since theft was a problem – but the tickets cost nearly as much as the pilferage did, and it got so I didn’t know which I preferred, a ticket or helping some poor kid get his fix.
As a dunkin donut baker in the 1980s, I was warned against ever working in the Hoboken dunkin, because no matter what you did or where you parked, you always got a ticket.
I understand the need for residents to have parking, especially because the city made such poor plans for the change over from working class – who had perhaps one car if that per building – to condos where residents were lucky to have less than two cars for each floor.
When I bought my condo in 1992, I was the only residence in my six condo building with only one car.
Parking permits – which may be unconstitutional – were supposedly the solution, except the rules changed in 2001 when then Mayor Dave Roberts decided to give residents one side of the street while those who worked or did business had to play musical chairs especially when it came to street cleaning days.
Apparently, one of the rules that was implemented but not enforced was the two hour meter limit. People coming to the city of Hoboken could park for two hours and no more, getting towed or booted after that. This was city wide. City hall didn’t want you in its city for more than two hours.
Fortunately, technology had not caught up with greed, and if you parked uptown for a hour, you pretty much could be assured you could park for more than an hour downtown if you had business there.
But alas greed found a way to catch up with the law, and the current administration has purchased a truck that reads your license plates and then if you park too long in that fair city, you get booted or towed.
One political person said the current administration doesn’t care about business or the fact that people need to be able to park several times to shop or dine in the city.
While the two-hour limit in the same parking spot makes sense, restricting parking to two hours citywide is clearly stupidity or blatant greed.
Clearly, all the current administration is for Hoboken to serve as a bedroom community for wall street, and not as a thriving city where people shop, seeking medical services or come to eat.
This lack of understanding of how cities work, how each element of the community contributes to its quality of life, will eventually turn Hoboken into a dead zone, more and more dependent on taxes raised from local residents rather than income brought in by tourists, shoppers and others.
But worst of all, it shows a clear disrespect for the people who work there, people whose living requires them to provide services to those who are privileged enough to park in its streets.
“Shoppers don’t vote,” one person told me.
This may explain why it is so easy to discount people who do business in Hoboken. We don’t vote. Therefore we don’t count, even if it costs us a fortune in the sin tax of tickets the city issues in droves.
So those of us who are forced to work in Hoboken dodge the spoiled people riding bicycles on the sidewalks, and the massive walls of baby carriages, and yes, get wet, in order to make our living without losing our shirts.
I woke up this morning to sunshine – at least for a few hours it took me to get to work.
It seems I’ve been soaked through for so many days over the last week that I’m beginning to feel more comfortable than dry and warm.
I walk to Hoboken these days because I can’t afford any more tickets the city is apt to supply me with whenever I park on the street.
Hoboken has always been a problem for workers like me. Back when I was a truck driver making deliveries and pickups on Washington Street in the 1970s, cops used to hound me about parking in the bus stop in front of the beauty supply store.
In those days, it was good to have the cops around since theft was a problem – but the tickets cost nearly as much as the pilferage did, and it got so I didn’t know which I preferred, a ticket or helping some poor kid get his fix.
As a dunkin donut baker in the 1980s, I was warned against ever working in the Hoboken dunkin, because no matter what you did or where you parked, you always got a ticket.
I understand the need for residents to have parking, especially because the city made such poor plans for the change over from working class – who had perhaps one car if that per building – to condos where residents were lucky to have less than two cars for each floor.
When I bought my condo in 1992, I was the only residence in my six condo building with only one car.
Parking permits – which may be unconstitutional – were supposedly the solution, except the rules changed in 2001 when then Mayor Dave Roberts decided to give residents one side of the street while those who worked or did business had to play musical chairs especially when it came to street cleaning days.
Apparently, one of the rules that was implemented but not enforced was the two hour meter limit. People coming to the city of Hoboken could park for two hours and no more, getting towed or booted after that. This was city wide. City hall didn’t want you in its city for more than two hours.
Fortunately, technology had not caught up with greed, and if you parked uptown for a hour, you pretty much could be assured you could park for more than an hour downtown if you had business there.
But alas greed found a way to catch up with the law, and the current administration has purchased a truck that reads your license plates and then if you park too long in that fair city, you get booted or towed.
One political person said the current administration doesn’t care about business or the fact that people need to be able to park several times to shop or dine in the city.
While the two-hour limit in the same parking spot makes sense, restricting parking to two hours citywide is clearly stupidity or blatant greed.
Clearly, all the current administration is for Hoboken to serve as a bedroom community for wall street, and not as a thriving city where people shop, seeking medical services or come to eat.
This lack of understanding of how cities work, how each element of the community contributes to its quality of life, will eventually turn Hoboken into a dead zone, more and more dependent on taxes raised from local residents rather than income brought in by tourists, shoppers and others.
But worst of all, it shows a clear disrespect for the people who work there, people whose living requires them to provide services to those who are privileged enough to park in its streets.
“Shoppers don’t vote,” one person told me.
This may explain why it is so easy to discount people who do business in Hoboken. We don’t vote. Therefore we don’t count, even if it costs us a fortune in the sin tax of tickets the city issues in droves.
So those of us who are forced to work in Hoboken dodge the spoiled people riding bicycles on the sidewalks, and the massive walls of baby carriages, and yes, get wet, in order to make our living without losing our shirts.
No comments:
Post a Comment