Have you seen this meter?

You gotta hand it to Mayor Annise Parker. She, and her colleagues on City Council, have come up with a brilliant way to raise additional revenue for the city without raising taxes or cutting services. In fact, implementing the plan saves the city money on supplies, as well.

And just what is this new revenue stream you might ask? Not refilling the paper rolls in the electronic parking meters downtown.

 If you see this meter, remain calm. Don't try to apprehend it by yourself. Please call the authorities at once.

Just think about it. Someone puts their money into the machine (no record of that transaction, is there?) or slides their credit or debit card in the slot to pay to park. Then, instead of printing out a receipt with an expiration time on it, the machine just sits there and looks at you like you're a complete freaking moron.

Oh you can try putting a note on your dashboard to the effect that the machine ate your money but there's no guarantee the losers who patrol the streets looking for cars to ticket are going to pay any attention to it. And even if you used plastic to pay to park when you go to the Municipal Courthouse to fight the ticket the functionary sitting behind the desk will look at your bank statement and tell you that it doesn't show what time the charge was made.

The idea would appear to be to force folks to use the city parking app on their phones to pay for parking. The only problem there is that no receipt is generated. The meter maidens must then run your license plate to determine if you've paid to park - and if you have any outstanding tickets that might get your car booted.

Now I'm out $2.50 for parking with nothing to show for it.

Thank you, Mayor Parker.

Coming and going

Sign outside the Inmate Processing Center on Commerce Street in Downtown Houston.

Everywhere else downtown, the parking meters are turned off by 6pm every evening and all day on Sunday. But not at the jail.

They'll screw you coming... and going.

Stop, thief!

I was a victim of crime. True story.

Yesterday I arrived downtown at a few minutes after 9 a.m. for two court appearances in the Criminal (In)justice Center. I parked on Texas Avenue just east of Austin Street. I walked over to the (space age) parking meter and took out my debit card. I punched in $2.00 for two hours of parking. The machine said it was printing my receipt.


I waited.

And I waited.

No receipt.

Then the machine said "thank you" and went back to the input screen.

I walked back to my car and wrote a note on a piece of paper that I had paid $2 at 9:10 a.m. and that the machine didn't spit out a receipt.

Fast forward to 11:20 a.m.

I walk back to my car and see a parking ticket on the windshield (luckily no boot on the wheels). I open the envelope to see what time the ticket was issued. If it was after 11:10 a.m. I would be SOL.

9:49 a.m.

That's right -- less than 40 minutes after the City of Houston stole my money, a mindless functionary of the city wrote a citation for illegal parking.

Now I have to go back to the municipal courthouse to request a hearing. Luckily I will have a statement from my bank showing that $2.00 was charged to my account that morning. The whole episode is infuriating, however, because it's not a rarity for a machine not to print a receipt. I can't count the number of times I've had to leave a note on my dash that I paid for parking but the machine didn't print out a receipt.

If the city's going to force us to pay to park on the streets, the city needs to make sure that its machines are working properly.

Houston's no-armed bandits

I got a parking ticket today. I earned it. Of course it was maddening that the ticket was issued less than 5 minutes before I returned to my car from the courthouse. But, then again, there have been plenty of times that I overran my time and didn't get a ticket so I guess I end up ahead in the end.

However, the no-armed bandits the City of Houston installed on downtown streets are notorious for not printing out time slips after someone feeds the meter. Standard practice has always been to put a note on your dash stating the time you parked and how much you paid and the fact that no slip was printed.

Today I saw a car whose owner had done just that. In fact, there was another car a couple of spaces over that had a similar note on its dash. For whatever reason, the meter maid (I have no idea what they're called these days) felt the need to ticket one of the cars and not the other. Now, in order to beat that ticket, the driver is going to have to subpoena maintenance and payment records for that particular machine and hope that the hearing officer will actually read the records and listen to his argument.

The city used to have parking meters all over downtown. They worked great. You could come back and feed them as necessary and -- if you were really lucky -- you might pull up to a meter that had time left on it. A few years ago the city installed new machines that print out time slips to show how long you could park your car downtown. Because the slips list the time your privilege expires, you can't go back and feed the meter as you go. And you can't take advantage of someone else's generosity and take their space before the meter expires.

Just another way of nickeling and diming the citizenry.

Adding insult to injury

While I was making my way over the City of Houston Municipal Courthouse this morning to handle a case for a client with a commerical driver's license I noticed that parking prices in the private lots across Houston Street from the courthouse had gone up. No longer does it cost $5 to park a block from the courthouse -- the new rate is $10.

Now I'm fairly cheap when it comes to parking so I will gladly parking a couple of blocks down the road for free and walk to the courthouse. I understand that most folks who venture to the courthouse aren't regulars and don't know they can find free parking just a little ways down Lubbock Street. I also understand that it's absurd that a citizen who has to spend hours in a cramped courtroom also has to spend an outrageous amount of money for the convenience of parking their car.

The same phenomenon can be seen in downtown Houston for those folks unfortunate enough to have to appear at the criminal courthouse, the juvenile courthouse or the family law center. If you don't know that it's cheaper to park near the ballpark, be prepared to fork over $10, $15 or even more for the privilege of parking near the courthouses. The county was nice enough to build a parking garage for the courthouse complex, but they'll charge you as well.

It doesn't have to be this way, does it? Down in Galveston there's plenty of free parking in the courthouse parking lot - and if that's full they built an overflow lot across the street. It's the same thing out in Fort Bend County. Of course there parking lot is undersized, but street parking is plentiful, if you don't mind walking and can remember where you parked.