POINT OF VIEW
Whining, ParkingWars, again, NHS and Kansas City
BY JOHN VAN HORN C
ITIES ARE WHINING BECAUSE their revenue is down.Wow! Da ya think? Can you believe it? There is a recession, and suddenly cities are saying that they
don’t have enough tax revenue. I mean, gee, people are spending less, so there is less sales tax.
Citieswere spending like drunken sailors and housing prices
go down a bit and they are, OMG, not getting enough revenue to cover their expenses!The solution? Raise fees, taxes, rates,what- ever you got. Let’s see ... I run a car company. I sell Belchfire Eight’s. I
find that due to the recession, I’m losing money. The solution? I immediately raise the prices of the fabled
Belchfire.Guess again. If I’msmart, I do a number of things. First, I look atmy costs and see what I can do about keeping
them in
line.Maybe that new startup I was planning should be put off a couple of years. Second, I look at the
Belchfire.Maybe the car Imake could be changed a bit to better fit the needs of the folks whomight buy it. Third, perhaps I need to look atmymarketing and get smart
about who uses my product and how I can better reach them. Fourth, maybe it’s time to go back to my core business. Perhaps that airplane division and the factory making refrigerators need to be closed or sold off to someonewho knows howto do it better. Have you heard any government agency even hint at doing
any of these things? Letme parse it for you. How about a goal of reducing costs 10% in every depart-
ment in the organization. Let themcome upwith plans to cut, cut, cut. Of course, the police department will start with street cops, so there needs to be some emphasis on the 47 deputy chiefs in charge of public relations and sustainability and the like. Are the street department and the library and the schools
delivering what we promised? If not, why not? Sometimes we lose sight of why we are
here.Are we supposed to teach students or change the social fiber of the country?You get the idea. Who are the government’s customers? Probably 75%of the
populace never use the services provided (exceptmaybe the street and water department), so why do we provide them? Is this the right thing to do?Maybe many programs need to be re-thought and canceled and then re-justified. What is our core business? Should we be collecting trash?
Running recycling programs? Selling water and electricity? Owning ParkingGarages?Running a rapid-transit system?Own- ing hospitals? Building housing? Or should we get out of the way and spend our timemaking it easy for private industry to do those things? Or we could just raise parking taxes and fees and forget the
whole thing. *** 6 OCTOBER 2009 • PARKING TODAY •
www.parkingtoday.com Extra, read all about it! Charging for parking creates parking
space. The UK is embroiled in hospital parking issues. The National Health Service or whatever is getting it in the neck for charging a “sickness tax” – read that, “parking fee” – to those who park at hospitals. However, as reported in the Lancashire Evening Post,
authorities have noticed that when parking charges were put in place, spacewas created.Up to 200 spaces a
day.They charge the £10 only if you stay longer than four hours.What that did was push out all those folkswhowere parking at the hospital and then walking down the block to work. See, creative thinking can solve the problem without creat-
ing another one. However, just for the record, I believe everyone should pay something for parking, and they might do so at Lan- cashire hospitals. This is an excellent example of how parking fees can affect parking habits.
*** I read that although many business and community leaders
want Kansas City to become a more sustainable city, they have differing views about the role that parking—especially subsi- dized parking—should play in Downtown’s development. The local enviros want the city to take tax dollars and build
light rail; the developers want rebates on taxes to cover the cost of parking. I think both are wrong. If a development needs parking, it
should pay for itself.Ditto for light rail. If charges for parking are high enough, people will look for alternatives, and light rail would become viable. Just sayin’ ...
*** A comment from a reader of a ParkingToday blog posting
on the “ParkingWars”TV show: But showing people paying their tickets in an orderly fash-
ion would not be good reality TV! Of course, the producers of “ParkingWars” will show all the “ugliness” of parking enforce-
ment.As someone wise once told me, “Parking is a grudge cost.” It’s difficult to make this industry into a bed of roses when cus- tomers pay us because they have to! The reader is absolutely correct.We have a huge PR prob-
lem. People love to hate parking, parking charges, parking tick- ets, parking enforcement, and the like.What to do, what to do. First,we need to start treating parkers like customers. I heard
a story today at lunch about a parking enforcement officer in a Colorado city who saw a woman walking out of a high-end store with her arms full of packages.Her parkingmeter had just turned to red. What the officer wanted to do was go over, help with her packages, and quietly mention that maybe she could put anoth-
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