The Parking Meter Debacle

"Court says parking meters unlawful. Declares meters to be like a criminal conspiracy. City officials in a dilemma.”

What would your reaction be to the above headline if it appeared in your local newspaper? Would you be confused or elated? Would you want to read the details more thoroughly? “Criminal conspiracy?” Those words sound serious. What may be going on here?

As a former police officer in Portland Oregon, I was always a strong constitutionalist, believing that the constitution should be held to the letter, and no deviation should be allowed. I was always confused about having to write parking tickets for vehicles that had overstayed their time at the parking meter. As a tax payer I often thought meters were an unconstitutional tax on top of a tax.

Look at it this way. All of the asphalt on the city streets and all of the concrete for the sidewalks has already been paid for by my and your tax money. Had I never paid for the streets and sidewalks then I would consider parking meters as a toll, for the privilege of parking there. But I rail at the idea of paying the meter when I have already paid my taxes for the creation of the streets, as they are.

In doing some research on court decisions I found there have been many legal attacks on parking meters, and more than one case speaking to their being an illegal tax. There have been other attacks that seem to be equally valid and I will share them. First, what is a parking meter: A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by municipalities as a tool for enforcing their integrated on-street parking policy, usually related to their traffic and mobility management policies, but are also used for city revenue.

What have the courts said about these machines? The court placed its holding on three grounds: the ordinance was not a proper exercise of the police power but an imposition of an indirect tax without proper authorization; parking meters constituted illegal nuisances. Parking meters are an improper “indirect tax.” In a California case, Rhodes v. Raleigh, the court found that the establishment of a system of parking meters was a revenue measure, the meter charge being an excise tax for the privilege of using the parking space. So I was and am correct. I disagree with the courts word privilege in this ruling. I believe it is my right to park on any city street. Another court decided that a city’s threat to tow your car if you didn’t pay the meter was a form of extortion, the payment of protection money to keep your property safe from seizure. Extortion is certainly a crime. (http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3549&context=californialawreview).

The parking meter situation here in Portland is a fiscal nightmare. The city admits that it loses on average of $100,000 per year writing parking tickets that go unpaid. Millions of dollars in these unpaid tickets have been allowed to accrue. The city employs fifty persons in Portland to enforce the meters. If the intention of installing meters was to provide revenue, it is a failure. And for the city to employ fifty persons to continue this losing venture is to question city hall management and their ability to reason.

Add to this the fact that parking meters encourage people to shop in the suburbs. There are no meters in Beaverton, or Gresham, or Troutdale. It invites the question are merchants in the suburbs more aware of what increases business? And why are downtown city business leaders so easily lead into the fallacy of the parking meters as a good idea?

Think about the concept: you put money into a meter to provide a salary to the person to give you a ticket if you park too long in a public place - not the rental of a space. Thus, parking meters serve no valid purpose other than to give money to the city to pay for a person to walk around giving tickets for people parking their car too long on a public street. Parking meters serve NO other useful purpose. And remember, the city is losing thousands of dollars each year.

As a sovereign citizen I also object to the social engineering aspect of bureaucrats trying to maneuver my activities by making parking expensive so I will use public transportation instead of my car while shopping downtown. Both aspects of this idea, expensive meters and using Trimet, actually discourage me from coming downtown at all. As a long time user of public transportation I have found it to be unreliable as well as an unwelcome source of transportation I’d rather avoid, due to the large numbers of people around me coughing and sneezing with multiple unknown diseases, not to mention the huge number of unfriendly, nasty bus drivers who do not like people and really should be working doing something else. After traveling on a crowded bus, I feel like I need to get home, quickly shower and then get a flu shot.

I would like to lead a challenge, with the proper attorney, to assault the validity or legality of parking meters in Portland. As they have been held a criminal activity and an unlawful tax by previous courts I think a proper and determined challenge would be productive and in the best interest of both the downtown merchants and the citizens of Portland who want to park in downtown to shop there.

And am I the only one that thinks the meter system is so confusing that it must have been designed by a bureaucratic collections of stumbling, incoherent drunks? Some streets offer parking for only one hour. Some streets for two hours. Other streets have three and five hour meters, and some streets offer one hour parking on one side of the street and three hours on the other side of the street. It’s the same street! I can just imagine the planning sessions and what criteria must have been used to plan this confusing non system that has proven so very unsuccessful. Was there input from the business owners about which streets could be parked on and for how long? Were they ever part of this conversation?

Portland tolerates a potentially illegal, annoying and confusing system of parking meters. It needs to be changed and with the right attorney and enough money I think I could do it. 

By Don DuPay