In San Luis Obispo the cost of a parking ticket will now cost violators $33 instead of $30.
As part of its new budget, the state has tacked on a $3 charge to all parking tickets.
The San Luis Obispo City Council decided to pass the increase onto violators rather than packing the charges onto an already unbalanced city budget. Last year, city officials agreed to a $10 parking ticket increase.
To me downtown SLO is just for tourists, drunk students, and the homeless. Why would I want to search for parking, pay for parking, and ditch several panhandlers for the luxury of paying 20-50% for the same item I could find elsewhere? And maybe even rewarded with a parking ticket for my effort. I’m not sure what SLO is trying to achieve with dowtown. Higuera street will never be Rodeo drive. If nothing else, it looks like what I would imagine the cartoon version of Rodeo drive would look like if it were re-created somewhere inside Disneyland. Complete with other kitch toourist toys like the trolley to nowhere, and the always empty double deck bus. That new tiller truck has gathered so much dust and cobwebs by now, we might as well park it dowtown somewhere for the kids to climb on.
Lets see San Luis Obispo City Council, you have successfully added another one of those little money making schemes to your already outlandish city. Let see:
1. $3 parking fines
2. Can’t feed the ducks
3. Can’t smoke in the city
4. No drive throughs
5. Can’t make any noise
6. No parties
Did I miss anything? So glad I don’t live or shop in San Luis Obispo.
Well stated Mad Hatter. SLO City is quickly becoming the “San Francisco” of SLO County. God help us. I’m glad to see there is another member of the “Boycott SLO Club”.
San Francisco is much more tolerant of noise and parties. Also, they have a police force that isn’t scared to death of the occasional Mardi Gras party, and is willing to get out of thier cars and enforce the law if needed. Feeding the ducks in Golden Gate park is perfectly o.k. The starting salary for a SFPD Officer lis less than SLOPD. In overall salary and benefits, I believe thier city manager is paid less too. S.F. allows drive through restaraunts in some neighborhoods. And just like SLO, thier dowtown is crawling with homeless people.
San Francisco may be somewhat socialist, perhaps communist, but San Luis Obispo is under martial law. San Luis Obispo is protected more like an exhibit in the Smothsonian, than it is governed like a small town where people actually live.
Let’s Just comment and not read the article.
3.00 dollars will be collected and passed directly to the Browninator who has had nothing to do with the collection idea. This is a hidden in plain sight tax. The citys/county will swallow the x cts in admin costs. In other locations in the state Cities are probably raising beyond the 3.00 dollars
This is against the idea of benefiting the Local Taxpayers, for what is a Local activity. Why are we fixing potholes in Sacramento would be a more relevant remark.
And forget about parking in the neigborhoods. If you take a walk I’ll tax your feet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hYpAYWqiwo
I agree on your tax comments but your comments on panhandlers are utter nonsense. Let me be perfectly blunt… if the panhandling activity in downtown SLO bothers you so much that it discourages you from shopping there, then might I suggest that the problem is you. I was born and raised in SLO and though there is some panhandling, it is relatively minor especially in comparison to most other places. If this level of panhandling is too much for you, or you can’t just ignore them, you have some personal issues that might need professional help. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m being absolutely dead serious.
How much like “other places” must the panhandling in downtown SLO become, before we should be concerned? I too am born and raised in SLO, and the panhandling and overall vagrancy in the downtown area is the worst it has ever been. I feel if it were young people in Cal Poly t-shirts panhandling dowtown, the city and police would have long done something about it by now. It is illegal to feed the ducks at Laguna Lake because of water quality issues. Yet the Prado Day Center feeds vagrants all day laong who sleep along SLO creek at night and use it as a bathroom. Just because you still pretend to see SLO in it’s “new clothes,” doesn’t mean we all do. “Ignoring” the panhandlers worked just fine ten years ago. But now they are much more agressive. They knock on your window when you are at a stoplight, they curse at you when you ignore them, and I had one follow me into CVS and ask me if I were picking up any pain medications – could he borrow “a few.” Perhaps you “mkaney” look too much like a vagrant yourself for them to be bothered with you.
Weren’t these parking lots and parking structures paid for using tax dollars of the people of the State of California? So why do we have to pay yet again if we want to use them? Just like state parks. WHY?
Taxes are a joke, and they have nothing to do with being a Dem. or Repub. because each party knows that taxes mean more money to spend, ergo job security and also potential pension security. Screw the state, work private and actually contribute something to this fair state.
Another good reason to not go downtown. Who wants to support all that overtime???
So what does the state have to do with parking violations in a particular county or city? Why should they get a dime?
Because they are the next layer up on the organized crime ladder, it’s that simple. When someone takes money from you via the threat of violence, it’s theft. I know that most people are not ready to accept the idea that government=organized crime, because you have these wonderful notions of democracy and a government of the peple, but it is true. The mafia also did good things for their communities, helped the poor sometimes, and what not.
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