subscribeHis Honor the Wiseass
by dusty on Nov.18, 2009 , under Uncategorized
I’d wager a significant portion of my meager paycheck that Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz gets a lot of dumb letters, and I’m talking about a breed of dumb that goes beyond simply misspelling his humdinger of a last name. I’m talking about the kind of dumb that inspires one to carry a gerbil-wheel with one before the entire city council, with more than 50 people waiting in line behind you to address the body, and talk about “nibbling on nuts.” (You have to page down to around 5:50 in Kristin’s notes to catch this Will Sandstrom classic — though I guess his tirade is more a case of “stark raving mad” than “dumb”).
Anyway, if most of us got the kind of letters he does on a regular basis, I imagine we would get into the habit of just chucking most of them in the trash. But not Cieslewicz, apparently. In his latest blog post, his honor the Mayor lampoons the most frequent occupants of his inbox, complaints about Madison’s parking enforcement.
“I am just writing to inform you of the world’s worst injustice which took place in your gulag of a city not too long ago. As a result of this travesty, I have plans to bring Madison to its knees. Let me explain. (Here there are typically three pages of single spaced detail on the person’s every move for the two hours preceding and following the moment of ticketing.)
As you can clearly see from my brief recounting of events, I was wrongly fined by your overzealous officers. If my ticket is not dismissed immediately along with an apology copied to the media, my employer and my mother, I will destroy Madison’s economy by never returning to your city to spend so much as a dime. Moreover, I will tell all my friends here in Toledo and in the greater Toledo area never to set foot in your fascist city…”
I couldn’t help but throw my head back and laugh upon reading this, for several reasons. Firstly, the Mayor once told me he has staffers who check his blog posts prior to their posting and weed out some of the more undiplomatic ones — but admits that, “every once in a while I sneak one past the censors.”
This is clearly one of the latter. As much as people as cracked as me may have enjoyed his candor in this case, somewhere someone is reading it and getting offended right now.
But even funnier to me is the striking similarity the mayor’s fictitious letter of complaint bears to one of my more vehement rants of all time relating to a parking ticket I received after mistakenly parking my motorcycle in a partially unoccupied handicapped stall outside city hall.
“Ignorance of the law is no defense against it, I get that. Not seeing the sign is a mistake anyone can make, albeit a one-hundred dollar mistake in the City-of-the-Perpetually-Offended. And if I had in some way inconvenienced someone who had a deserved right to that spot, I would take a deep breath, clutch my manhood in one hand and my wallet in the other and pay the fine without complaining.
But WHO in HELL was I inconveniencing by using up the remaining three feet of that parallel parking spot? When I emerged from that horrid meeting three and a half hours later, the same gray van was parked in front of me, so it’s not like any passing disabled motorist even got the impression the spot was claimed. And what other use was there for the remaining space I took up? After all, I find it highly unlikely a paraplegic motorcyclist was going to come along and park there…“
And it goes on to get more outlandish and ridiculous from there, though the exaggerated hyperbole was intentional.
So yes, it’s easy and even popular to complain about Madison’s parking enforcement — I’m certainly no trailblazer when it comes to my views on parking or traffic tickets. I salute the mayor for unflinchingly dishing the BS right back, but hope he understands that it CAN get tough to make a living that pays very little and often takes one into the “danger zone” of Madison parking downtown.
I’ve literally paid hundreds of dollars into Madison’s city budget through parking tickets — not quite a thousand, but certainly in the ballpark of five hundred. Some of them I deserved, some of them were questionable. Either way, it gets overwhelming, and if no one’s going to name a wing in city hall after me for my generous financial contributions, the least I can do is waste some public official’s time with an incoherent letter.
Of course, if Mayor Cieslewicz dismantled the entire parking enforcement division, he could be rid of the complaint letters altogether. It’s a plan I’d like to implement, and I figure if the mayor gets to take an occasional crack at being a wiseass, I should get a shot at running the city every once in a while.
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November 18th, 2009 on 1:20 am
I drive downtown on a regular basis. Really, I do. And I’ve owned a car in Madison for 15 years. And yet I have avoid all but a handful of parking tickets. A couple on campus, when I let the meter run out. And then these two:
1. Spaced out on rush hour parking restrictions on Atwood (not really downtown)
2. Got a cell phone call just as I was about to get out of the car, and then promptly forgot to put money in the meter.
The easiest way to avoid a ticket is to use the ramp. No overtime on the meter. Madison is actually pretty easy to park in, compared to other cities. You may have to walk a few blocks, but there’s almost always a spot fairly close by.
If there was no parking enforcement, then you’d really never find a spot. People would park all day and never leave their spots. Plus, more people would drive downtown, so more people would be fighting over the spots. The tickets are just a reminder to share the public space with others.
November 18th, 2009 on 8:02 am
I have paid upwards of, at minimum, $1,000. Most of this is the cause of living at the Regent my freshmen year and not knowing when home Badger football games were. I was towed almost every game. Even leading up to my recent tow on Monroe Street last month. I currently have a $90 over due ticket to pay. I’m just forgetful. I guess all the fines in the world won’t change that.
August 29th, 2010 on 4:58 pm
Sigh, I’m just addicted to twitter followers nowadays. They genuinely really don’t do much for me personally, but yet it just gives me a contented sensation within understanding that men and women are actually, well probably browsing what I write about.