City Hall Is Not Holding Up Its Part Of The Contract

This morning, I noticed this car parked on South 7th Street with two $10 meter violation tickets on its windshield, one issued today and the other issued yesterday.  City Hall has no shame.

Because of condensation on the inside of the parking meter's plastic screen, the digital display of the amount of time on the meter was, literally, impossible to read.  If the driver of the car put quarters in the meter, they would have had no idea how much time was on the meter, nor how much time a quarter would get them (written information inside was also impossible to read!).  Shouldn't that be considered a broken meter?  Shouldn't that be an adequate amount of hardship to obviate a ticket?  Not in Hudson.

I'm pretty sure that part of the unwritten contract with public services, including parking meters, is fundamentally understood as the following:  We, the public, will pay for services if you, City Hall, keep those service in decent enough condition and handle them properly so that they do not inconvenience or burden us or make us so angry that we want to strangle someone.  You do your part and we will do our part in the form of paying taxes or placing quarters in your parking meters.

Who can I strangle?

The only reason that the parking enforcement officer issued the meter violation ticket this morning (and possibly yesterday as well) was because he could see the flashing red light on the side of the meter without any condensation blocking the light.  That officer could not have possibly read how much time that meter did or did not have on it.  

Condensation inside Hudson's parking meters is a huge problem, even well after a rain, which was the case 2 Saturdays ago when I took a good look at 24 of the parking meters on one half of the island in the middle of the City Hall Municipal Parking Lot.  17 of the meters were impossible to read due to condensation, no matter how I positioned my eyeballs.  The other 7 were not easily readable, with some moisture obscuring a clear view of the numbers displayed inside.  Fortunately, it was a day when the meters weren't required to be filled, but that's beside my point.