HUDseen: Do You Think...?

What do you suppose will happen when the gangsters, the "artists," the gum chewers, the sticker-crazed conspiracy theorists and the vandals strike the city's new million-dollar parking kiosks soon to be installed on lower Warren and in our four downtown parking lots?

Do you think that the city employees and departments that don't give a shit what our meters (and the city generally) looks like will suddenly find the time and will to maintain the million-dollar kiosks so that they DON'T LOOK LIKE SHIT ALL THE TIME? Who will suddenly be in charge of removing stickers from the kiosks once a week? Would that be the same person who is given the weekly responsibility of removing paint and graffiti from the million-dollar kiosks? Will that be the same person tasked with wiping the screens on the million-dollar kiosks to clear them of dust and grime so that people can see exactly what the million-dollar kiosks are telling them to do? Don't count on any of that. Within a year, most, if not all, of the million-dollar kiosks will look like crap. Just like our meters do.

The thing about kiosks is that if one of them gets vandalized and is out of order, dozens of parking spaces are affected. When one parking meter is vandalized and is out of order, just one space is affected. Also, our meters are primarily mechanical, they run on a 9-volt battery, and they are not difficult to fix or replace. Who will be in charge of repairing the kiosks when they go out of service or are vandalized? A company from North Carolina? Or how about Tom Depietro, perhaps, with all his free time and supreme control?

At last month's informal meeting, I asked Tom -- who seems to be the spokesperson for anything and everything that is happening in the city -- why the city would implement the new kiosk parking system without first hiring a parking supervisor to oversee a proper parking department. Our so-called Common Council President's responses were comical: "The theory that we came up with as a parking, um, group, meeting, committee meeting was that this should increase revenue such that (audio is muddled for about 5 seconds) then we will be able to develop a parking (muddled) and hire a parking director."

"When do you plan for that to happen?" I asked the omniscient one.

"When we see what kind of revenue it generates," Tom responded.

"You're putting the cart before the horse. You will never succeed."

Don't you love it when city officials use the word "theory" when looking toward the future as it relates to "revenue." What an absolute joke!