THE WATCHER

Smart Meter? Dumb Guy?

On November 22, I went to the Nevada School of the Arts Gala at the 5th Street School in downtown Las Vegas. We arrived at 6:30 p.m. as my daughter was one of the violinists. As I was parking my car, in the exact same lot that I was just at on Monday, a bearded man came running up to me waving his arms, “You can’t park here,” he says. I tell him, “I just parked here on Monday and my daughter was a performer”. He said, “The city has taken these spaces and they have to be available to city employees 24/7.” “You have got to be joking,” I say. He says, “You have to find parking on the street or in the justice hall parking lot across the street”. Now mind you the event starts at 7 p.m. and there were over 30 empty spots he was protecting and the few metered spots were full. He told me that the city had taken the parking spots away from the School’s parking lot and just catty-corner was an entire empty city employee parking lot! He also told me that people wanted these spots available so they did not have to cross the street! I was shocked, this is a school of the arts with hundreds of parents bringing their children here weekly for music and art lessons and the city took away dozens of revenue generating metered parking spaces so a handful of city employees did not have to cross the street! I looked down at fresh new pavement where the parking space numbers were only a week ago, and they had been scrapped off completely. To add insult to injury, the parking lot meter terminal, was still accepting money for the spots that we were not allowed to park in. I was informed of this by a friend who grumbled to me from her car as she passed by to find some street parking after she had just paid for now unattainable space.

So, I drove around the block to the justice center parking garage to park my car. I parked in spot number one and had to walk way across the lot to find the parking meter terminal and swiped my credit card. I paid $4 for four hours of parking, figuring that the Gala would be over by then. I turned away from the meter and I discovered two quarters in my pocket and decided to put them in for a buffer. I walked back to the meter and checked space one only to find out that I had mistakenly hit the number 1 twice and paid for spot number 11. Crap. I decided to get into my car and move it to space 11. As I was walking back to my car a glancing around to find space number 11 and I could not find it. There was no space 11. Somewhere after spot 5 or 6 the next dozen or more spots numbers were scrapped off and reserved for tenant parking. Holy crap! I just paid $4 for a parking space that did not exist. How in the world if the space is not available to park in is it still available in the meter terminal? I should not have been able to pay for spot 11 if it was not available to park in. I walked back to the meter terminal and carefully paid another $4 for spot number one, this time cursing the city, technology and my carelessness.

As I was walking back, the fifty yards to my car, for the fourth time, a security guard riding his segway, comes whizzing into the garage. I wave my arms and flag him down, he rides over and I explained my situation to an obviously uninterested city employee who did not have the authority to refund me to me $4 for the unavailable spot number 11. He said if only he had only shown up a bit earlier he would have noted it and let me park in spot one without paying the additional $4. “Thanks,” I said, and he also told me that you did not have pay for metered parking after 8 p.m. I looked around and no mention of that was posted anywhere in sight. This added insult to injury. I just paid for 8 hours of parking when all I needed was one. You would think that the computerized metered terminals, which are smart enough to take a credit card and calculate time and space would have not let me pay for a spot not available. Shouldn’t a computerized meter be programmed to not take money beyond what is required? So now it is 7 p.m., I’m in my fancy suit and tie, I’ve walked at least half a mile, spent $8 just to park my car across the street, paid for a parking spot that did not exist, repaid for the correct spot, all so some city employee didn’t have to cross the street. I needed a drink, stat.