Phoenix, Arizona, is known as the Up and coming mini metropolitan area that
has won awards for many things as a Wonderful city. Hmmm.
I have lived in Phoenix for 27 yrs. I would not call it a hick city, nor a sophisticated one.
Nor one in dire straights, our illegal alien problem not withstanding.
However, one Mini problem would definitely qualify for the best kept Secret for a city like this one. OUR equal sized city competitors are in every almost state but we have a growth factor they do not have. If you were to visit or live here, and recreate or simply go to work one small smudge on the ?Landscape? would soon stand out and you would ignore it as an aberration. However, this aberration can become deadly as it sends out the wrong message to its ?Causers.?
In every city I have ever visited or lived in, while the standard city problems exist everywhere, one would not see a cavalier attitude about driving or parking. I am not saying Phoenix has the worst drivers for a city of ?x? size, I think Salt Lake City has that award. But when I go for my morning and afternoon walks, what I see frustrates me since the city has no intent [they say resources] to stop or curb it. In much of our city, we have slanted curbs if one is not downtown. Slanted curbs is just a style of curbs. However, in Phoenix, it is meant, by over 35% of the inhabitants [that means 1.5 million car owners], that they can park up on the sidewalk, across the sidewalk, on the front lawn on the side of the house, backwards, and any way they can think of to simply not be in the middle of the street when they exit their car or other vehicle.
Now, in any of the other US cities of this size, one simply calls something like the police departments parking enforcement division. They would inform a ?Patrol? car to stop by these addresses or approximate addresses and if the violation is confirmed, to ticket the car for improper parking. Ain?t gonna happen in the city of dynamism, the city of Illegal Aliens,
the city of huge home value appreciation. Why? Cause the fathers who run the city today, while they have thousands of police officers [Doing a very good job of dealing with criminals] keeping us SAFE, they have ONE, yes, ONE lady patrol officer, whose job it is to site improperly parked cars.
We have bedroom communities with police forces of 10 officers where all10 officers double as parking enforcement officers. But not Phoenix. One sweet lady, about 30 years of age, visits on every call where someone is parking so horribly that they are on someone else?s property. I have even called her office. She takes about five days to respond, and one day she got here in 3 hours! [Must have been her first day.] I don?t blame the officer for the improperly parked cars but I do blame both the drivers, and the city for not directing a slightly different use of officers? time. There is a philosophy that says, if you let a kid get away with small stuff, he will graduate to bigger stuff.
I have nicely walked up to parked patrol officers who were writing notes and asked them if
they would visit an address 2 blocks away before they got another call. They said yes and
ignored me thereafter.
Remember, not one of 100 but one in 3 cars in Phoenix, outside of downtown, parks
improperly!
Another consequential result of this is that 25% of all drivers in Phoenix are not licensed
drivers ?because those that do lose their license continue to drive with total invulnerability
and they drive alongside non-English reading or speaking illegal aliens?so that these
drivers cannot drive safely since they do not know what the driving laws are!
