TIM PRESTON: Kill the Rooster 2/1/10

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January 31, 2010

Tim Preston The Daily Independent Sun Jan 31, 2010, 11:56 PM EST

Another $5 insult on my windshield this week reminds me I’ve been too quiet about Ashland’s practice of writing parking tickets.

Perhaps I’m not being sensitive to the needs of the thousands of shoppers circling the blocks looking for a place to park and spend their money. All I can say is, even when the parking meters were bagged during the Christmas shopping season, I still never noticed anyone carrying a bundle of gifts or circling the block looking for a space.

I do, however, often hear people say things like, “I don’t want to go downtown and fight all that traffic, look for a space and still end up with a parking ticket.”

Before I get into it, I started to write this column a few months ago after an early morning run into Huntington that netted a $5 ticket, immediately followed by another $5 ticket in Ashland. Part of me felt like going to Ohio and leaving the vehicle parked in Ironton long enough to go for the triple crown and collect three tickets in three states in three hours, but I couldn’t justify tossing another $5 out the window.

And, I haven’t been back to Huntington in daylight since, even though the city has a lot of businesses I like.

This is a topic that is completely unimportant for anyone who doesn’t work downtown, and an endless source of frustration to the ever-shrinking number of people who earn their paychecks here. Those who work in downtown Ashland were long ago tagged with the title “roosters,” based on their habit of finding a parking space and “roosting” there all day.

The prevailing city attitude is that “rooster” people should be punished at a rate of $5 per meter violation, or $10 if you can’t come up with that five bucks within four hours. Or, the penalty starts at $10 if you’re caught in a non-metered space for more than two hours.

I find that whole concept to be so short-sighted, it could just as easily be called blind.

The city’s elected officials seem to disregard the fact that each downtown employee pays a city payroll tax for the privilege of working in the city, and also seem to have no problem imagining those lines of mythical beings known as “shoppers.” I’m guessing they’ve even convinced themselves they’ve seen traffic circling the city’s blocks looking for a place to park.

Parking meters in downtown Ashland make sense to some people. If we didn’t have those meters, they deduce, people who work downtown would park in front of every remaining business and prevent customers from gaining easy access.

Fine — leave the meters at the spots directly in front of those businesses (there will be fewer and fewer as time goes by), and cut the rest off at ground level before there are no more roosters to kick around.

TIM PRESTON can be reached at tpreston@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2651.

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