Hey, there! Log in / Register
BTD converts our block to resident only parking without our knowledge, desire or consent
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Was it really necessary for
the name of the street to be redacted?
boo hoo
get a permit like everyone else.
Just send your servants to procure one
... and have "your people" fix the tickets you got when it changed and you didn't know about it and were parked on your own street.
Everybody has Jeeves the Butler and June Cleaver to take care of these sorts of emergent hassles for them during working hours, no?
Now I'm scared
This is the third time I've agreed with you.
exactly.
Living in a city brings with it many inconveniences, like not having a driveway, which at times necessitates the need for a resident parking sticker which may or may not be procured at a time which is convenient for those with a standard 9-5 work day. If it's too much to handle, then maybe big bad city living is just not for you!
I have a permit, but...
... that does not help people who are visiting us.
If there were a parking problem for residents, I would have no objection to the street being converted to permit parking only. But, as I noted in my letter, there is no such problem, and the residents of the street should have been consulted for their opinion about whether such a problem exists before the conversion.
The rumor on the street today is that the request to convert the street came from a family on our street with three generations of people living in the same house and at least three cars regularly parked on the street, despite the fact that they have a two-car garage in back of their house that they can't park in because it's filled with junk.
In contrast, we have one minivan for a family of seven.
We have a lot of BC students living on the street. Many of the in-state students don't bother to change their address to Brighton with the RMV because their insurance rates will go up, and many of the out-of-state students don't bother to change their registration or license to MA for the same reason. Clearly, the people who filed the request with the city are hoping to drive away some of the students and free up spaces for their fleet.
Yes, the students should be registering in Brighton and paying their fair share of excise taxes to the city. You'll get no argument from me about that. But I don't think inconveniencing people like us who have been living on the street for over a decade is the right way to make that happen. Certainly not without asking us about it first.
Are there 'guest permits' in Boston?
Cambridge and Somerville both sell fairly inexpensive guest permit cards to residents, who can lend them to visiting friends as needed. Somerville's guest permits cost $5 a year each, and you're allowed to buy two of them. Does Boston not have this system?
No.
No guest permits here. My agency can't even get permits for doing home visits. City doesn't issue any such thing to anyone.
Which is monumentally stupid
Since the whole question of how to solve the visitors problem is obviously a solved problem (c.f. how other towns like Cambridge do it), it's just monumentally stupid that Boston hasn't instituted a similar system.
Exactly
In Cambridge, I was even able to obtain a visitor permit for myself as someone who does in-home therapy for a person there. The usual procedure is that the Cambridge resident applies for one, then loans it to their visitor to put on the dash while visiting. I just called up the Cambridge people and told them that the person I'm visiting has mental illness that makes it difficult to call up and request forms and things coherently, as well as being suspicious of official agencies wanting personal information, so it would really help me if they'd just send me one to use. The person had me fax in my vehicle registration and professional license and sent me out a permit.
In Boston there aren't any sort of visitor permits for anyone. Apparently they don't want Boston residents who live in congested areas to be able to receive social services?
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Privacy
I might not want anyone who didn't need to know what street I lived on. Plus his neighbors might get mad that he's raising a stink about this to the city—might make city workers less enthusiastic about plowing, garbage pickup, etc.
It may also have been redacted to protect Boston's tenuous international relationship with Belgium...
-Cosmo
http://cosmocatalano.com
World's Toughest Writer
Point taken. However, IMO, if
protecting the writer's privacy is really an issue, then why not redact the person's name instead? Seems to me that the name of the street is an important fact, should one want to independently evaluate the validity of the City's action in implementing a "resident only" parking policy.
I don't post my address on-line, but...
... I post using my real name, I told you what city I live in, and I'm in the phone book (on-line and paper). If you're neither lazy nor completely stupid, you can figure out where I live in a few seconds, but I see no reason to make it a gimme to sickos.
Not to mention that googling for "belgium boston consulate" will tell you my street as well (in the summary text of the second match).
All good points Jikamens. I made the comment because
I thought that the "Something Better To Do" site had redacted the street name. I didn't realize you had intentionally omitted it from your post.