Lake Geneva Parking Tickets

Dear City of Lake Geneva,

I write this letter with a heavy heart. Hopefully the heaviness I feel is emotional, not a result of a deeper, undiagnosed valve problem, but the pain is no less real, the heaviness no less a burden. I’m one of your biggest fans, but you already knew that. I’ve done more to further your fame than any other individual since John Brink first spread word back East about a lake as clear as it is deep, your lake. But this exposure hasn’t impressed you. I don’t ask for much, but I do ask for a little tolerance. I ask you for a policy to be reconsidered. I ask, no, I plead, for a review of a most strict, most ridiculous habit that you’ve succumbed to. This nasty habit might be well intentioned, but it is viewed as the cruelest of punishment levied on those who wish to only do you good. Lake Geneva, it’s about the parking meters.

I do not begrudge you your municipal right to enforce parking code. It is, after all, 2011, and tax revenues are down across the country. What’s that? Your tax revenues aren’t down? Of course they’re not. You have the highest residential tax levies around the lake, even though you also consume huge taxes from hotel rooms, restaurants, and industry. You have a Home Depot and a Starbucks and a Best Buy and the headquarters of several large, national corporations all within your meager boundaries, yet you demand residential tax payers to pay more than they do in Williams Bay. Williams Bay has Daddy Maxwells and Harpoon Willies and a “resort” called the Chippewa that more than likely produces annual room taxes equivalent to one weekend’s worth at the Bella Vista. This is not a fair fight, yet supply and demand dictates that you can get away with your inflated residential tax structure, and I do not fault you for this. It is, after all, a free country and buyers are free to choose to vacation where they please.

The issue isn’t the $12 fine that parking in an expired metered location generates. This amount is fair. It is reasonable and I do not object to this amount, though for worker’s who might be working downtown and miss a refill of quarters in their meter this fine can steal away more than an hour of gross wage. Even so, the fine is fine. The issue I have is really two, the first of which being the propensity of your meter maids and fellas to attack an expired meter as a shark might a bloodied tuna in the confines of a very small pool. Their ability to sense expired meters is uncanny. It is supernatural. Once, I saw a parking meter woman near Chicago Pizza. I drove by her. I drove straight to the stall in front of Boatyard Bagel. I ran in to grab a coffee. Not a blended or specialty coffee that might allow time for that parking enforcer to saunter over to find my unpaid meter, but a straight coffee. A regular coffee without appointments. I ordered, paid, walked. In the time it took me to walk a cumulative 50 feet, this meter maid had covered 600, and my reward for a $2 coffee was a $12 ticket. I never saw that meter maid at full sprint, but I’m guessing there were land speed records being set in her quest to find my momentarily unpaid meter.

If you send your meter police to a meter police training camp, they no doubt finish at the top of their class. In high school, I would practice basketball in my parents driveway. As a way of keeping engaged in my practice, I would not allow the ball to bounce twice after a missed shot. This game kept me on my toes, back when my toes were agile and strong. Your meter police must also play this game, counting any meter that has expired for longer than 2 minutes as failed enforcement. Reports of meter police standing and waiting as the minutes countdown to that glorious, revenue generating expiration are reported to me by unreliable sources, so I won’t include mention of those instances here.

Even the enforcement of expired tickets doesn’t bother me, after all, I play by the rules, even when the rules are restrictive to the point of lunacy. The real gripe today is in your hawkish enforcement of the payment of these fines. If I get a ticket on a Friday, according to your rules, I must pay the ticket by Tuesday. If I were to receive a ticket on Friday, say at 2 pm, and mail that ticket with my payment on Monday, this would be reasonable, even to a court of law. But if I mailed that ticket on a Monday, and you received it on a Wednesday, I would, more than likely, receive a further letter from you within a week from that date explaining that I now owe you another $12. You would threaten me with a warrant or something serious, and if I didn’t pay that $12 furtherance within another 5 days I may be subjected to many years and or decades in jail. So that might be a stretch, with the jail time, but the multiplication of the fees would undoubtedly cause Bernie Madoff to smack his forehead in strange bemusement, wondering how it was that he didn’t think of this scheme first.

City of Lake Geneva, you know how fond I am of you. You know how my heart breaks to point out your deficiencies, even if they are few and far between. The trouble here isn’t with me, and it isn’t with my loyalty and devotion to you, my prized 53147, it is with your disgusting behavior that you inflict on those who wish to only compliment and reward you for your hard work. That bridge you just replaced by the Riviera? Beautiful work. Really, truly, a shining example of municipal pride. But new bridges and consistently watered flower baskets adorning your Main Street do not preclude you from fairness. What to do now? Change your parking fine due dates from 5 to 10 days. Then change the $12 late fee to be due within 14 days of the default date. For now, I must go. I’m at Starbucks and my meter is expiring in a mere 6 minutes. From this post on, I understand there will be a target on my car, and I am up to your challenge. I am as Leonardo, and I dare you to catch me if you can.

Best Regards,

David