November 19, 2004 - Ed is Swept Away

Thursday is street sweeping day in front of the Edhat office (the ofice as we now call it). There is no parking from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM on our side of De La Vina. Wednesday morning is when you can’t park on the other side.  And if you don’t comply with this rule, you’ll end up $35 lighter in the wallet. Not that they actually CLEAN the streets on those days. Or, do they?

Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com drove around the streets-to-be-cleaned. We counted the number of cars parked along the street just before the restricted parking time, and again right at the beginning of the time.

We always think of the parking ticket givers as being mean and grouchy.  Well, the dedicated staff member who saw green envelopes being given out like Halloween candy found out that this is not true. Here is our firsthand, eyewitness account of a ticketing incident. At approximately 1:30 PM, a driver was sitting in her old sedan, parked on De La Vina in front of the Braille Institute. The ticket-mobile came up behind the sedan. Seeing that the vehicle was occupied, the parking enforcement officer gave a little toot to tell the car to move along. The driver appeared confused.  It was obvious that the driver was unaware that she could not park there.  The officer tooted a second time, but when that toot was also ignored, she punched out a ticket, pulled up next to the car, and hand delivered the citation from window to window.

With a disgusted look, the driver of sedan drove away.

The dedicated staff, who has trouble leaving well enough alone, decided to strike up a conversation with the officer as she was working on another ticket a few spaces down.  Well, she might have been mean (actually, there was no question she was mean), but she definitely wasn’t grouchy. With a big smile and an amused chuckle she said, “I honked.  She shook her head – said she wasn’t going to move, so I gave her a ticket.  You can’t park there.”

A couple of minutes later, the street sweeper came by. We were paying close attention to the brushes and the ground. There is a popular theory going around that the sweepers don’t actually do anything. They’re just a dog-and-pony show to justify the ticket revenue.  Well, not only did we see and photograph brush-to-street contact, but we also had visual sightings of trash and debris that magically disappeared after the sweeper had passed.  Also, we inspected an area that only became visible once a ticketed car had pulled out. We can say without reservation that the space under the ticketed car was dirtier than the rest of the swept street.

As far as our data collection is concerned.  On Wednesday at 3:00 PM, we counted 123 cars on the right-hand side of the 18 blocks of De La Vina and Chapala between Mission and Alamar.  At 11:00 AM on Thursday, we counted 70. At 12:30 PM, we counted 42.  And, finally at 1:00 PM we counted 18 – that’s one illegally parked car per block. It’s also $630 of revenue for the city.

The winner, with a guess of 41/17 was Kelly, who wins an Edhat t-shirt and a 2005 Santa Barbara Axxess Card.  That’s Kelly, like Kelly Green, the color of the parking tickets. Well, it’s not really kelly green, but the dedicated staff has been having trouble with colors lately.

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