I officially hate the City of Berkeley
March 7th 2007
That’s the “entity” City of Berkeley, not the place. The place is alright, in general. The place would be really great if the parking tickets didn’t cost two arms and a leg. Take Alameda, for example, where I also got a parking ticket a few months ago while taking the GRE —it was only $17! I was like “wow!” and scrounged under the couch for some change with which to pay it. I happily sent them a check (after depositing the change in my checking account, thinking better of sending it in that little envelope they give you) including a little note: “I love your city and you’re not trying to rip me off! Thank you, I’m happy to send you this check for $17. Don’t spend it all in one place!”
Someone at the City of Berkeley must have been like, “hmm, how expensive can we make parking tickets and still make people pay them? What’s that you say? They legally have to anyway? Reeeeeeaaallly…. even if they’re…. [evil music] Thirty-Five Dollars?!?” Yes. Thirty-Five Dollars. It’s such an exorbitant fee that you have to spell it out: Thirty-Five Dollars. Yes. Hyphenated even.
More importantly, it’s so high that it makes me dislike the authority of the very city I live in, all the way to the point where I’m thinking of living in (dun dun duhhhhh) Oakland. Or, at least, I’ll never live in one house with four cars and a tiny driveway with two hour parking and street sweeping on the first Wednesday and Thursday of every month. That’s my own fault. It’s my penance, my punishment, our bad karma for having too many kars. Er, cars. It’s Berkeley’s way of saying “STOP driving, you’re part of the world’s problems!” while using the Thirty-Five Dollars to pay for gas and parking attendants in all the Interceptor parking enforcers that hover around the city like flies around a dump, picking off anything of value they can still find in their dirty heap of a city, even its own residents.
All I ask is for $17 tickets, not Thirty-Five Dollars… or, perhaps, tickets prorated for the city’s biggest supporters, like me! When you think of it that way, it makes me feel a little better, but shouldn’t they include that in the cost of living? I’m just thinking, if I move, and get an apartment where I have to (heaven forbid) pay for parking, even if it’s $70 a month, it’d still be cheaper than parking tickets. Wow.
Okay, I’m done. It’s just money. This probably feeds the homeless or something, right? Or at least it feeds the flies…
dude, i parked my scooter on the sidewalk in rome and i got hit with a 70 euro fine. that’s like $90 ! super rip off.
I feel your pain.. it is a 35 dollar ticket in Detroit also.. The problem is that there is soo little parking down there that when going to sports games I can either spend 30 bucks for parking in a parking lot a half mile away or 35 to park somewhere I am not supposed to and just pay later.
One more on Monday, brings my 2-week total to 3 tickets :-/ I have to be more careful.
Here’s another good link expressing the horrid parking laws in Berkeley.
Well, I hate City of Berkeley, too. I am so made at right now. It’s not even about the amount of ticket. If I am at fault, I will just pay it and try to be more careful next time. What’s worse is when I have followed all instructions and paid for my ticket in 3 days only to be notified 53 days after my payment was cleared that they wanted more money. This time they want $95. They simply accused me of not payment my ticket in full. It was a correctable citation and I had it signed. Somehow it was too difficult for them to enter in the system correctly or go take a look at that ticket again and correct their own mistake.
I think City of Berkeley is going to try to rob people any way they can to try to cover that $93000 they spent on the police overtime when that Marines protest took place.
Bingo, they’re paying for their own mismanagement of city resources, from the Marines protest to actually suing the University of California with the stupid tree-sitting protesters for absolutely no reason and to no end. They waste money like no other and steal it from hard working citizens of theirs through stupid administrivia like parking tickets.