There's a fire hydrant on my front lawn, legally taking up two precious parking places in a neighborhood crowded by too many cars. My street is zoned for "R-2" -- meaning it is nothing but duplexes. There's never enough parking, especially as more drivers, each with their own car, crowd into the rental units. The city planners were probably thinking of nuclear families with one or possibly two cars each, and not the reality of more than two cars per unit on average, which causes bad habits.
Such as parking in front of the hydrant.
I might have a Grinch-like reputation in my neighborhood for the number of times I have called Santa Clara Police dispatch to have an officer come out and ticket someone. It had become something of a curmudgeon's pet peeve (I can only imagine how cantankerous I will get when I have to use a cane. I'd probably get in the habit of hitting people on the head with it, if I had the strength to lift it above my own).
I've been on sabbatical from volunteering for the parking enforcement of Santa Clara P.D., but my annoyance with a few of my more abusive neighbors has been festering. This finally led to the following letter which I stuck under the windshield wiper of this morning's violator.
I can't help but feel a little smile at the moment of panic when they see some white paper under their windshield. I'm so impure, there's no hope for me, but at least it enhances my sense of humor. Hopefully, they won't be so pissed off they won't take my letter to heart.
Or else I'll be calling the non-emergency dispatcher the next time I see them.
Here's the letter I left for them. I'm keeping a copy on my hard drive for the next car as well.
<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title></title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Linux)"> <style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
Friday, October 30<sup>th</sup>, 2009
Dear Neighbor,
Our city's laws prohibit us from parking within 15 feet of a fire hydrant on both sides. You can barely see the red paint on the curb which once made this more clear. As it is, the way you have parked could be ticketed if any police officer were to see it. This would happen if an officer happened to be driving by or was called out by a neighbor's phone call.
I realize parking in our neighborhood is a challenge. Most of us have two cars for each duplex with only one space in our driveways, and many have more still (the family across the street has three, another one towards Benton has at least six). Hardly anyone uses their garage for parking. Like me, most of us use them for storage.
But while parking in our neighborhood is crowded, and fires are rare, the point of the law is not to collect extra money for Santa Clara, but to prevent a tragedy from happening if there were a fire.
God forbid one of our homes catches fire, but if it did, your car would be in the way of putting out the flames. Sure, they could tow it, or even shove it aside with their fire engines, or simply smash through your windows to better position the hose. But the point is your car would be slowing down and distracting the fire fighters and any rescue efforts.
Unless your car is small enough, the fire hydrant is positioned so awkwardly that the only way you could legally park near it would be to block either my driveway or my neighbor's, which would be another issue.
I'm sorry about this, but I am sure you will understand. Please take care to park someplace where you are not within 15 feet of a fire hydrant. Like most safety precautions, it's one we hope we will never have to be thankful for, but if there were a fire, it could make all the difference.
Sincerely yours,
David
</meta>
</meta>
| Views: 118
Email This to a Friend 
