David Penberthy: City Council sends parking inspector to ambush parents outside school — rather than provide a drop-off zone
A parking officer lurks outside a city school to ping stressed mums and dads dropping off their kids in an area with no dedicated parking for parents. It’s a disgrace, writes David Penberthy.
- Parking fines issued at rate of one a minute in Adelaide
- How to get the most out of your Advertiser digital subscription
On both the morning and afternoon of Tuesday this week, a parking officer from the Adelaide City Council set up camp directly opposite a CBD R-12 school.
The school has hundreds of students and no dedicated drop-off zone. This means parents must scramble to find somewhere feasible to deposit their children.
It doesn’t matter with the older kids — a lengthy walk to school would do them no harm — but it’s a real challenge for parents with little ones.
It is impossible for these parents to drop their kids at the school legally, as there is zero parking, with all the surrounding dedicated spaces being taken by CBD workers.
It’s the job of the council, you would think, to work with schools to find solutions for problems such as these. Schools are a pivotal part of the community, and they also pay council rates.
But instead of trying to find a way to make things work for parents and their kids, the council has identified this as a revenue-raising opportunity, dispatching the parking inspector to pick off parents like fish in a barrel as they park on yellow lines or verges and footpaths in side streets to get their kids to school.
Using his camera, this guy spent a full two hours generating a considerable sum of revenue for the ACC, pinging off photo after photo of people’s number plates, with the fines to be issued by mail in coming weeks.
For his efforts he received a few top-shelf sprays — regrettable, but kind of understandable, as frazzled parents juggling the responsibilities of children and their own jobs had this added unpleasant bonus thrown into their day.
This photograph is a stellar example of why people hate government and hate over-government, and all the bureaucratic pettifoggery that comes with it.
Yeah, I know, rules are rules. But there’s another rule at play here, and it’s this. As a society, we are much better at catching and fining civilised people who commit the occasional accidental or minor misdemeanour, than we are at dealing with those who are professionally committed to ignoring the law all the damned time.
During the past few years I have had four encounters with the police, only one of which resulted in any punishment.
We had a creep hanging around at one of my kid’s old schools, and even though the police were terrific, nothing came of that (and nor would it have anyway even if they caught the bloke, given the way the courts operate these days.)
I had another incident where a woman who was clearly and spectacularly mentally unwell chased me in her car, snaking through the inner-southern backstreets at 80km/h and trying to drive me off the road.
Even though I did manage to hide behind a tree and take photos of both her and her number plates, and she was still waiting in my suburb, the police took so long to attend that she upped and left.
In the third incident, my wife’s credit card was stolen and used by some no-hoper to buy goods to the value of less than $100 every day for a fortnight via tap-and-go. These included a Krispy Kreme doughnut from a hotel near the Adelaide Airport at 11am every weekday of that fortnight. Even with that good lead, nothing came of that one, either.
The one encounter with SAPOL that did result in a fine — and a huge one at that — was when I accidentally re-registered my old work van instead of my Hilux and got done for driving unregistered and without compulsory third-party insurance.
Some $1700 later I had learnt my lesson — that the state will show no leniency, or wriggle room, when it comes to those evil bastards who generally obey the law but occasionally make an innocent mistake, even one that I offered to fix there and then with my mobile phone by visiting the ezyreg.com.au website.
None of this is a crack at SAPOL. Indeed, you get the sense that with the ever-increasing challenges caused by ice-related crime, police resources are stretched as never before.
But I am making the point that the really easy part for governments, be they state or local, is to sit back and let the cash roll in by showing no discretion whatsoever in cases that involve a big whack of revenue.
In prosecuting the case against the ACC this week over this parking issue, our radio show was contacted by nurses at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Memorial Hospital with concerns about new parking limits in the North Adelaide area.
These include three-hour zones near the Memorial where nurses and orderlies are apparently now being given permission to interrupt their shift to feed the meter. (Sorry, sir, but could you just hold that cannula for the next few minutes? And you wouldn’t have change for a tenner?)
MORE NEWS:
Woman wins battle over $77 parking fine
Hospital parking costs total $20m in 2018-19
Parking fines issued at rate of one a minute in Adelaide
I spoke to Councillor Anne Moran yesterday and, while there have been crickets from the council on the question of hospital parking, to her credit she has flagged the introduction of a motion to provide parking permits for parents to let them drop off their kids at city schools.
Any kind of solution would be welcome, although you get the sense that the ACC has no commercial interest in solving this, as solutions are a cost while fines are an income stream.
The good news, though, is that at least the council this week moved a motion declaring that we are at the centre of an international climate change emergency.
It does nothing to help the city parking issues, but it will be a huge relief to the people of the Amazon.