- Jack up City Sticker fees on a completely arbitrary baseline of vehicle weight, suddenly making thousands of families minivans on the hook for a sizable increase, based on shoddy or imagined reporting that vehicles over that certain tonnage do more damage to city streets.
That's pretty much what happened late last year. The solution?
- OK, we'll just raise everyone's City Sticker fee.
Everyone says, "Golly, Rahm sure is wise. He spread the cost increase over the entire city." In reality, we're pretty sure that's what he wanted. Tax increase = more money for pet projects. Rahm didn't let a crisis go to waste.
Anyone see this happening again?
An influential alderman wants to put the brakes — sort of — on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to use red-light cameras and cameras concealed in vans to catch motorists who speed near schools and parks.
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, said there’s no reason to keep the cameras rolling around schools until 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 p.m. on Friday when most of the kids are gone by late afternoon.
“Schools are out at 3 p.m., so it shouldn’t run past 4 p.m. — even if there’s an after-school program. There’s no reason for people to be ticketed after 4 p.m. around schools,” said Beale, whose committee must approve legislation implementing the crackdown.
“Parks are a different story because they do stay open a little longer. And parks are heavily used by the kids in the evenings.”
Beale also wants to lower the fines and phase them in even more than state lawmakers did to ease the blow on motorists.
Anyone want to bet that Rahm doesn't "compromise" on this, too?
- He still gets his speed cameras;
- he still gets to claim it's "for the children," even in the face of studies showing the claim that Chicago has an outrageous pedestrian accident rate is pretty much BS;
- he appears "reasonable" by having Beale phase in the fines and shortening the previously proposed hours of operation.