In the ceaseless war against senseless parking laws the rebels have found a new and most unlikely ally.
“My meter had not expired, that’s the key point, but they’re saying it’s illegal to do what everybody does, which is feed the meter so you can hold a space while you run errands,” he says. “I told a police officer about this and he said the law stinks. They don’t like it ’cause they don’t want to be harassing shoppers and discouraging people from driving downtown to shop.”
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Daspit’s rebellion is one of many to flare up over the last few years, as the city’s cracked down on scofflaws. From Mayor Daley’s perspective he has no choice: with federal cutbacks, the city needs the money parking tickets bring in.
But the Loop is another matter, as he discovered on November 13. “My wife and I had to go downtown for a [meeting] which wasn’t supposed to take too long, so I figured I’d just park on the street,” he says. He parked on the west side of Wabash at Madison, at a meter that charges 25 cents for five minutes of parking. “We found the parking space at ten minutes to nine and my wife put 50 cents into the meter,” he says. “The meeting was taking longer than I expected, and when I went out to feed the meter at 9:03 I had a ticket.”
“So I called the library and I got a guy who told me that the parking law had been amended on November 1. At least that’s what I think he said; he had a heavy Indian accent and I couldn’t understand him so well. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he understood me either.”
For her part, Reeves says she doesn’t know enough about the 30-minute parking law to comment on its merits. “When [Daspit] called our office I indicated we need a copy of the ordinance to study, and we made a call to the city clerk’s office,” says Reeves. “They indicated that they would research it and send us back a copy of the ordinance.”
