The Davis Square Community

I have to agree with the OP here. We used to get reminders in the mail that we needed to deal with this; then we got tickets, and getting a second ticket (or 4 or 5 right after when the law had *just* changed) on a car still parked in the same location, with the ticket still on it, is rather offensive. It is the law that this can be done; I agree wtih the argument that it should not be, and that it targets folks who already have less resources (an off-street parking spot, to start with) than it does others. And $20 is a lot better than $50; I'm not even sure why that would be an argument except to someone who does not have money issues (see below comment about privilege). I'm glad there are people talking about this who can afford to do so, because the folks disproportionaely hit are going to have less focus to do so, and that is how it is designed--hit folks less likely to be *able* to make a fuss over it. But then I think much of what the Somerville Parking folks do is evil, even more evil than this--but I'm certainly not going to dissuade someone from speaking up against something that they think is wrong when those disproportionately hit by these sorts of things don't have as much capacity for it. And the whole "there are things more evil than this, why this" argument does not fly with me; the more rules there are out there, the harder it is to summon the energy to get at all of them, and this kind of thinking supports that maneuver. I'm glad the OP is saying something here. As for the burden of figuring out how to keep track of warnings? I think this could be dealt with if it was important; I don't think only things that make money for the city are worth the bother; there is value in having Somerville be friendlier, which is the opposite direction it has been going in this manner, and we seem to forget that the people making these decision are theoretically working for *us*, so including our values in their job descriptions does not seem strange to me.

Also, thinking it is easy to have the focus to get this dealt with before a ticket happens is a form of priveledge, particularly when poorer folks have so damned many *more* things to look out for all the time as it is. I noticed the person above siding with you said that they'd gotten a ticket, but that it was their problem; it's not hard to miss these deadlines, and to say "it's on your windshield, you have no excuse" really does not take into account the realities of many, apparently including the person above siding with you, which is why they make money on it. I agree with friendlier policies. I hate what the parking situation has become here; where I live, there amount of parking available to me did not changed when the rules became more stringent; the changes were completely for revenue and just made even more hoops to jump through to have gatherings, especially when they were impromptu (one of the oringal appeals of this part of Somerville) and thinking this is fair and reasonable when it wasn't needed is a form of brainwashed denial as far as I am concerned.