Read Online Meter Maids Eat Their Young by E. J. Knapp - Free Book Online Page A

trip, call it fifteen on average, and you’re looking at an hour of productivity loss per worker per day.”
    I sat back in my chair, pulled out a small sharpener and considered what Philo had told me while I ground down another quarter inch of my pencil.
    â€œYou said the operational costs are borne by the revenues from the meters and the tickets issued. What kind of money are we talking about here?”
    â€œThat would depend,” he said, reaching for his tea. “Are we talking your typical, hypothetical city, as we have been so far? Or are we talking about here?”
    â€œHere is where the Mangler is,” I said.
    For the first time since I met him, Tom Philo’s countenance turned dark, the teacup hovering half way to his lips. He set it back on the table and leaned forward.
    â€œFor that,” he said, “We’ll need a little history lesson.”

Nickles And Dimes And Quarters, Oh My!
    Philo sat back in his chair.
    â€œBefore Jefferson Cooper took over as head of the DPE,” he said, “this town had roughly three hundred city blocks covered by meters.”
    â€œHow many meters would that be?”
    â€œWell, on average, twenty meters to a block,” he said.
    â€œSo, six thousand meters in all,” I said.
    â€œClose enough,” Philo said. “On blocks with a bus stop you might have eighteen meters. On a longer block, maybe twenty-two. All in all it works out to twenty per.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, writing down the numbers in my notebook.
    â€œThese meters were concentrated in the downtown area, in and around the shopping areas. These meters were all of the two-hour variety and cost one dollar to park the full two hours. They operated six days a week, excluding holidays, from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m..”
    I did a quick calculation. “Five bucks a day,” I said. “Per meter.”
    â€œCorrect,” he said, “provided the meter was used all day, which most of them were. Excluding Sundays and holidays gives you about three hundred days of meter operation. Three hundred days at five dollars a day times six thousand—”
    â€œJesus,” I said. “That’s nine million dollars a year. I had no idea.”
    â€œFew people do, believe me. They think just as you, nickel and dime. How much could that be? But it adds up.” He shifted in his chair, checked his tea cup and found it empty. “More tea?” he said.
    â€œNo thanks, I’m fine.”
    â€œKeep in mind,” he said, pouring tea from a ceramic pot shaped like a frog, “we had a relatively low number of meters for the size of this town. There were also a number of city-owned lots leased out to private companies to be used as temporary parking areas for commuters. These were plots of land that might one day be built on. Rather than let the land go to waste, they were used for parking. The city collected a small fee from the lot operators; the operators were obliged to lay down asphalt and remove it should the site be sold for develop.m.ent. Everyone was happy.”
    â€œAnd then Cooper came to town.”
    â€œHumph,” Philo said, his expression turning darker. “Indeed he did. Right from the start Cooper doubled the number of city blocks covered by meters. They replaced the six thousand two-hour meters with half-hour meters that cost as much as the two-hour meters. To that they added another six thousand one-hour meters to the mix. In the last eighteen months, they’ve more than doubled that number again. Today there are something like twenty-six thousand meters covering thirteen hundred blocks. We have meters surrounding the park. There are meters out in the industrial part of town and on the residential streets nearest to the downtown area. On top of that, they began closing the temporary lots. You see ‘Under Construction’ signs going up all over the downtown area but never any construction.”
    I had