By Lance Winslow, Special for USADC.
Not long ago, I was talking to one of the mayors in a city around here. It turns out that parking tickets were a huge revenue generator for the city. Nevertheless, no one likes to get a parking ticket, and no one likes parking scarcity. Most of the parking scarcity comes from improper planning, and most of the high-priced parking tickets come from the growing bureaucracy which has to hire meter maids, buy vehicles, fix parking meters, and all the rest. To make more money and keep it profitable, they have to write more tickets, and grow that part of their agency.
So what happens when they can’t generate any more money, but the city needs more money, and they’re looking for all of their income sources and inflows to increase so they can pay for legacy costs, and maintain the a semblance of a city budget. Remember cities don’t have the opportunity to just print money, and they are unable to go years without having a budget like the federal government seems to be getting away with lately. It seems this country has also shown us that the easiest way to make money is to lobby your federal government to kick down more cash.
Well, if that’s the way the new game is played, and if crony capitalism and favoritism is how the world works these days, that perhaps it’s time that I suggest a new strategy for some of the cities which are nearly broke and need to raise additional revenue. All the cities really need to do is lobby the federal government to make a mandate and legislate that parking tickets can be deducted as business expenses. I am sure Congress can just through a few more pages in the next omnibus bill they pass without reading it first.
If they did this then businesspeople will park more in red zones, and overstay their parking meters, or disregard whatever the sign says because they will just deduct the parking tickets later from their taxes.
Now then you might think this is a joke, and it started out to be a joke, but if this is the way we are going to play it, such a strategy could actually work. In some regards the fact that it could actually work is indeed a statement of just how silly our government has become at all levels. It shows the ridiculousness of the bureaucracy, the improper budget planning, complicated tax code, and incompetence of our elected representatives. All I ask is that you think about it, and consider this article on a philosophical level.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Innovation in America. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net
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