Poll: Parking Management, Planning, & Revenues for St. Louis Should…?
Last Tuesday State Rep Tishaura Jones won the democratic nomination for the county office of treasurer. On November 6th she’ll face Republican Timothy Bachmann and Green Anthony Stevens in the general election. Given the St. Louis political landscape Jones will easily be elected.
During the primary campaign Jones differed from her three opponents on the issue of parking falling within the responsibility of the treasurer’s office:
No major city in the US has a “Parking Czar” that controls the building of city garages and where parking meters are placed. The primary function of the Treasurer’s office should be to collect, manage, and invest the city’s funds…period. If elected, I will work with other city elected officials and the Missouri Legislature to transfer this function to the appropriate department and concentrate on increasing the return on investment of the $1.5 billion currently under management. (tishaura4treasurer.com)
Is this why Jones defeated her three opponents? Would moving the responsibility for parking to another part of city government just shift problems? Would development deals be easier or harder? Will city & neighborhood leaders better be able to plan the parking component?
The poll this week asks for your take. Vote in the right sidebar.
— Steve Patterson
Interesting question. Someone needs to do it (manage on-street parking). In many smaller cities, it falls to the police department. In larger cities, it’s usually a separate, dedicated department. What makes it unique is that it involves both police powers and significant amounts of revenue. It also depends on whether a city looks at parking fees as a way to manage a scarce resource or as a way to generate more revenue. In the end, it will probably boil down to who’s in charge, and not to which branch of government it’s attached.
The reason I feel that Jones won was that she had the black vote push. I listen to the first debate and she was not the strongest candidate in bunch. I felt that she was lobbed questions and was skipped over for 2 questions by her grade school teacher that was acting as the mediator, which she did speak up to answer the question which I did respect. As for shifting to another department of making a new department would make it more steps to get it done. If the lead person/s for the new/shifted department thinks one way and she disagrees then it becomes stale mate, which is the reason why there is a call for less Alderman in the City of St.Louis. I don’t know what the current system is per si, but she should get what system that is in place in order before she trys to change things up too much. I hope she see’s that the concern she has is one of the last ones that she should. She would need to find waste in the department and wasted or non collected money.
This department should fall under the Mayor and all revenue split between the general fund and the police, who happen to write the tickets that bring in the bulk of the revenue.
Don’t most “real” cities have a system where the meter patrol people that write tickets also collect coins from meters? At what point will parking meters start taking credit/debit cards? There should also be some way that the ticket writer could collect the fee from the owner/driver of the car so that the issue would be settled right then. This would make the meter patrolpeople much more accountable for their jobs.