Dear Editor:
I actually look forward to reading the letters to the editor in this column every week because when this publication reports the goings on in our town government, it seems like our elected leaders don’t read this page unless someone has written a letter to attack them.
We can write letters about parking. Same old reply, “we are building a garage at 916 Garden St.” Sorry, but I live downtown, that does me no good. Oh and we have to pay to park? Sorry, but I can’t afford to pay upwards of $200 a month to park my vehicle.
We can write letters complaining about the boorish behavior of those that visit our city. I have seen a woman performing oral sex on a man in a parked car on my block. I have seen young men with their genitals fully exposed urinating on our streets. I have come home to find a man passed out in the foyer of my building. Unless the city is somehow collecting taxes on all the “business” these people bring to our town, the only ones that benefit are the business owners at the expense of the city residents.
Oh yeah, and those visitors take up our parking spaces. I cannot keep track of how many nights I have circled a block looking for a space only to pass car after car that does not have a parking permit. And would someone explain to me exactly how the police are supposed to time “visitor” parking. Put post it notes with a time on the windshield and come back and “check” if the car is still there? It is a completely unenforceable policy. Resident parking should be for residents only and for our visitors for whom we can easily get visitor permits for at the parking authority. At one time the parking authority used to automatically include a visitor permit with the parking permit sticker each year. Why did that change?
I recently got a ticket on a weekday afternoon for being in a yellow zone (because I was unloading my car.) However, this past weekend the same vehicle sat in the same space all night without getting a summons. I will gladly take a summons book and circle my own block once a night to write out tickets. So I guess young people can visit Hoboken, urinate in the streets, have sex in public, park in a yellow zone and not get penalized for any of it.
Quite frankly it just seems that most of the city council is too busy getting ready to attack each other than doing some very simple things that could improve our quality of life overnight.
Point in fact. My roommate wrote letters to our councilperson to complain about a rowdy bar on First Street. She called to “discuss” the issues. Yet in the years I have read this paper, I have never heard a report of this councilperson bringing up those quality of life issues in a council meeting or sponsoring any legislation. And I would place a bet with anyone that would take it that if I put my stereo speakers in my front window and played music as loud as comes out of that bar I would get a visit from the police and then those same police would walk right by that bar that is playing music just as loudly as I was.
So if the city council has time to do something rather than fight with each other and point fingers, maybe you all could do something simple that benefits us all.
Ban visitor parking in residential/permit zones. We have plenty of metered parking for our visitors. Make the fine for public lewdness and urinating in public consist of community service — working litter patrol to clean up our streets on Saturday and Sunday mornings!
Is anybody on the city council listening?
David S. Bimbi