Many of your readers have been sending links to articles explaining how bad the economy has been and how much worse it may get. Some of us have little recourse but to bite the bullet and make do, do without or downsize. Municipalities across the U.S. also face hard economic times but they have a recourse you and I do not have. They can raise revenues by fees and fines. Cities across the country have been increasing fines for such things as traffic violations and many have decided to enforce laws on the books to raise revenue.
In my small town, I live in a downtown district. I often park on the main road downtown as I have the past three years. However last week, I received a $10 parking violation citation for parking in a spot more than two hours. Now I understand the law is the law, but I have not received a violation of this kind until now. A policeman came door to door a few days after I received the violation to let residents and business owners know that the city has decided to enforce parking laws. I looked at the cop and said (in a nice way of course) that I wished he had told me this a few days ago because I already received a violation. Of course I promptly put a check with the notice in the mail.
Early this summer, a co-worker passed a state highway patrolman on a state highway. The cop turned around and pulled him over and informed him that he may now have his seat belt on but as he passed him…he did not have it on. Now if my co-worker had stuck to his story and insisted he did, he may have received a warning but he caved in and admitted it. A citation was issued and it cost him $97 including court costs. Ouch!
Now none of this really has anything to do with many of the topics we discuss here on SurvivialBlog.com but I thought I would warn others for three reasons: we always want to fly as low under the radar as possible when it comes to law enforcement, we don’t want to spend our hard earned money on violations when we can best use them for beans, bullets and band-aids, and we don’t want to risk having our vehicles towed when we rely on them daily including having to bug out one day.
My advice to anyone is to wear seat belts if your state requires it, don’t exceed the speed limit (even 5 over will get you pulled over in some communities), make complete stops at stop signs (to avoid ‘rolling stops’), don’t risk avoiding putting change in a parking meter and try to be aware that many towns are now enforcing a two hour parking limit.
Here are four sites I bookmarked that back up my assertions:
- Should Police Departments Be Used As Income Generators For Cash Strapped Municipalities? [1]
- Speeding, Parking Tickets on Rise as Government Revenue Source [2]
- Hit the Brakes: State Governments Raise Traffic Fees [3]
- Sharp Acceleration in Traffic Tickets [4]
– Mendy P.