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

noticed and said so.
    â€œQuite a phenomena, isn’t it? To drive through the downtown area, one would assume a boom town when in fact not a single new construction start has occurred in over three years.”
    â€œSo where did all the commuters go?” I said.
    â€œOnto the streets, of course. And as those twenty-six thousand metered parking spaces began to fill up, the number of tickets the department issued doubled and doubled again.”
    â€œHold on,” I said, scribbling as fast as I could in my notebook. “I need to get this straight. You said there are twenty-six thousand meters operating in this town.”
    â€œClose enough.”
    â€œAt five dollars per day, per meter?”
    â€œMore like double that. With the higher cost, lower time-limit meters, it works out to about a dollar an hour per meter on a ten hour day.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, doing the math on paper because the numbers were now too big for my head. “Ten dollars a day, twenty-six thousand meters, three hundred days … My god, that’s—”
    â€œNearly eighty million dollars a year,” he finished. “Assuming, of course, a full ten-hour day of meter operation. The actual figure is probably closer to seventy million.”
    â€œMinus the four million operational cost?”
    â€œNo. Operational cost, in a normal city with an equivalent meter load, might be four million. Parking enforcement here is far more aggressive. Though I can’t say for sure, the number no longer seems to be on their website, but I would estimate the DPE’s operational cost at roughly double that.”
    â€œSo, sixty million and change profit?”
    â€œAbout that.”
    â€œAnd what about the tickets?” I said. “You said they doubled?”
    â€œAnd doubled again this last year. Let me give you an example of just how out of proportion this city is. Our nation’s capital has a population of just over a half million people. We sit at just under that. The entire county, of which we are the center, has just over a million-five. DC has one of the highest ticket fines in the country at forty dollars for a standard ticket.”
    Philo sipped his tea, cradling the cup in his large hands. “Our fines used to be ten. They now match DC’s at forty. Last year, DC issued one point six million tickets for a total revenue gain of sixty-four million dollars.”
    â€œHold on,” I said. “How can a city of half a million people issue a million tickets?”
    â€œThat’s easy enough,” he said. “Keep in mind that the resident population of a city is quite small compared with the transient population on a day-to-day basis. The majority of the people who work in a city don’t actually live there. They commute from the suburbs. And you have delivery and service vehicles. And you have tourists. We may not have the attractions of a city like DC, but we do get our share of tourists. Indeed, fully fifteen percent of the city’s revenue is tourist generated.”
    â€œThe park,” I said. “The monorail.”
    â€œThat’s perhaps the biggest draw, yes. And we have some fine museums and, of course, the hot springs north of town. That area is still pretty undeveloped and the people who go there, inevitably end up here.
    â€œSo,” he continued, “DC issued one point six million tickets last year. If my projections are correct, and I believe they are, the DPE will break the million mark in tickets written, though there are some allegations that not all those tickets issued were legal. Legal or not, the DPE stands to collect forty million or more in fines alone. That would see a hundred-million-dollar-plus increase to the city coffers by the end of the fiscal year on September first. Is it any wonder the city council loves them?”
    â€œWhoa, that’s incredible,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Wait, what did you say about