At least we don't live in New Haven

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

I saw this on political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's blog. Puts Somerville's erratic parking rules to shame, doncha think?

"I live in a dense urban neighborhood, in which the majority of houses are built close together, with few driveways. So most people park on the street, and like urban residents anywhere, you have to keep an eye on the street cleaning rules — which, the permanent signs clearly state, are suspended for the winter beginning Nov. 1.

"So here’s what this lovely cash-strapped city of mine does: they come by late in the day, after dark, after most people are already home for the evening, and put up a few temporary paper signs up and down the street, declaring the next day an emergency street cleaning day. And that’s considered sufficient notice, and if you don’t see the signs in time, you’re shit out of luck. I did happen to go out last night, so I didn’t get towed, but a lot of people just did, and the city of New Haven probably just made an easy thousand bucks for itself, on my street alone. But seriously — it may be legal to give people less than a day’s notice and then tow their cars, but morally, it’s barely one step above a mafia protection racket. Especially when the street cleaning “emergency” is not a massive snowstorm or something — just a normal accumulation of fall leaves."

(sits back and waits for someone to give an example of how Somerville is worse)

Comments

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Ah, see...another reason I don't drive. If I don't drive, I don't have to park. It's a beautiful thing.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

and then you don't have to worry about your car damaging a falling willow tree!

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Hells yeah.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

...wow.

not cool.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

yet not quite uncommon, either - there were a few time that Somerville put out no parking notices for construction or something around highland rd/morrison back in 2005, the night before the work was done, and towed people for it.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yeah, i rarely park in somerville, but do park in cambridge all the time. sometimes the signs are paper ones and it's incredibly annoying, but they give us a bit more notice at least, and do the megaphone thing in the morning.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

What sucks is when (in the case I mentioned) the city violates its own standards about how long signs need to be in place.

What can the average citizen do?
Not much.

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

Organize! A society of individuals will always be easy pickings for Government and municipalities. We need more community and town hall meetings to express outrage. If everyone refused to pay, no one would have to pay.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Cambridge puts up paper street cleaning signs when street cleaning is suspended for a holiday, so the streets can be cleaned on a different day. They do the substitute cleaning in the 5th week of the month, since there's no regularly scheduled cleanings that week.

For normally-1st and 2nd week areas, the substitute day can come *before* the holiday when regular cleaning is suspended, since the 5th week of the previous month is closer to the holiday than the 5th week of the holiday month.

They're supposed to put up the signs at least 48 hours in advance (fun stuff if you go on vacation for a week). Fortunately, they announce these subsitute days a year in advance at http://www.cambridgema.gov/TheWorks/departments/strClng/schedule.html .

[thebostonreader.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this happened to me in '06, on Willow. They didn't actually tow, because I ran out barefoot to stop them, but the cop made me give the tow truck driver all the money I had (not as much as they wanted for the towing fee), and then they gave it back to me after my roommate got forceful with the cop. The whole thing was very shady.

[cos]

That text is completely unreadable on my friends page. Can you remove the color/style tags from it? Note this community rule:

Formatting: Please post in plain text. The occasional bold or italic tag is fine, but extensively formatted entries won't properly display on many people's friends pages. Please do not post using large or colored fonts.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

whoa. that is really strange.

second moderator note

[ron_newman]

Specifically, please don't use this:

   <div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="entry">

Try <blockquote> instead.

Re: second moderator note

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

Sorry -- I didn't realize that was the default for the rich text indent tag. I've fixed it.

Re: second moderator note

[ron_newman]

Thanks. Rich Text is Evil, and you've just showed us a brand-new reason why.