"Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters"

All across America, citizens realize that parking meter overtime violations are just one of the ways that governments tax us to raise money. Those roads and bridges and new fire engines and softball field maintenance and COVID-19 clinics have to be paid for, ya know?  

I went to get gas the other day and there was a small, tastefully hand-scrawled sign on the window with words to the effect that due to recent tax changes in Maryland, cigarettes are now about ten dollars a pack (so quit hollerin' at the cashier about it!) I mean, hot a-mighty! And people are still smoking them! I doubt that raising the tax another ten bucks per pack would stop them. One of the small pleasures in life is telling a young puffer that "in my day," ten bucks would have bought 40 packs of Kools. And then they all give me that look that only says one thing: Shut up, old man.

But parking meters bring in a lot of revenue for a city - when they are working. Detroit, Motor City,  has come to realize that they are losing a bundle because while they have 3,404 parking meters planted in the cement here and there, fully half of them are broken, so parking is free at that spot and no money flows to the city. 

Last year, Detroit became the largest American city to declare bankruptcy, and they figure that they could rake in $6 million in revenue every year if they would just get the rest of the meters working.

And you knew I would be coming in with an ironic twist to all this, and here it is: the city inflicted this wound upon itself. They tried to cheap out and cut back on the quality of batteries that run the electronic meters. They used to use Duracell batteries ("Dura, as in durable. Cell, as in power cell") but some high muckety-muck decided to swap them out for cheap unreliable batteries to save a buck. 

City workers used to go to each parking meters twice a year to swap one Duracell for another, but switching to El Cheapo means the meters don't hold a charge and parking is free at that meter - and no quarters come into the city coffers.

AND, not only that, but the city recognized some time ago that they needed to upgrade the cylinders on the locks for the little battery doors. The old ones are vulnerable to seizure from water or gunk getting in them. But "someone" said to wait a while before investing in the new brass locks that are needed, and now the city has a lot of batteries they can't even get to to replace with good batteries if they want to!

Sometimes, you have to spend a buck to earn two bucks.