Ticketing To Death

As if the structural harassment that has occurred for so long in this area has not been enough, the town is now actively trying to ticket the community into surrender.

Customers fear the reaper (meter maid) and run in and out of the store, worried that their meters expired or they ran out of quarters to feed them with. I am at a constant low of quarters, if I even have them, trying to help people feed the overprice meters to avoid the ticketing folks, who while just doing their job, are doing it in such a way that no one can really be here at their leisure.

In Montclair, two towns over, a center of commercial development and traffic, a similar problem used to occur. Parking was sparce, meters were expensive, and ticketers were out in full force, even to the point of waiting for meters to expire or pre-writing tickets to be ready at anytime. The highly populated, highly commercial area was up in arms - and finally this past summer, Montclair officially announced they would provide people with a grace period, so that drivers could not be ticketed until their meter was expired for a certain amount of time. This is a wonderful solution to encourage shopping, parking, and exploration of the community.

Instead, we have tickets here in Bloomfield being written by the dozen - what a cash crop that must be! Some tickets are written minutes after the meter expired, if that. One source went to court to try and contest it for this reason, and reports that only certain demographics of people were getting the tickets cancelled. Very interesting way to maintain a commercial district if I do say so myself.

Meters in place are a good idea to avoid commuters parking there for long periods of time. Bloomfield is even gracious enough to have 12 hour meters available for those commuters who need them. Then suddenly meters started vanishing inexplicably. With no word whatsoever, meters in the parking lot behind my storefront were gutted and turned into permit parking only. Suddenly half the spaces have been removed for patrons, and no one knows why.

This is all, from an ubran design perspective, a very intelligent way to create a community of shoppers and people who really want to be in the Bloomfield Center district. Note the biting sarcasm. Without an attempt to foster a community, it will simply die. It becomes more and more evident daily that death of this community is really what makes the town officials all warm and tingly inside. Too bad there are people living here and trying to make a living here.