Park in your own driveway? You're a criminal!
Whatever you do, do not park on a gravel driveway in Toledo, Ohio. The Mayor of Toledo, Carty Finkbeiner, has deputized city workers to go out and ticket people who park on gravel driveways. Even if the driveway is in front of your own house. The Mayor, incidentally, is facing a recall.
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Who says government doesn't always know best? And if government says you can't legally park in your driveway, they must be right. What business do you have parking your car in your own driveway anyway?
Sure, this makes sense to all of us. But people in Toledo, on the other hand, are all upset because they're receiving parking tickets for doing the unheard of. The criminal act of parking their cars in front of their house.
Crime wave
And the acts of criminality have become so rampant that the Mayor has deputized city workers (instead of police officers and the parking division of the city) to roam the hardscrabble streets to issue $25 parking citations to individuals who have committed this heinous crime.
Not every citizen is getting a ticket. Only those who don't have their driveways paved. Gravel isn't good enough for the Mayor. It's gotta be paved. If not, you're a criminal.
Dag-gone it!
Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, who surprisingly is facing a recall, says he stands by a bureaucrat's the Acting Commissioner of Streets, Bridges and Harbor's decision to ticket citizens who park in their driveways.
"Every law in the city should be enforced and I will defer to the director over the media, that's for dag-gone sure," Mayor Finkbeiner said in a press conference last night. "I will not second guess her because more times then not she's right and the citizens that are criticizing her are not right."
Surprise, surprise
It's not as though Toledoans are hell-bent against paved driveways. It's just that the decision to enforce a little known regulation is taking them by surprise. Take Charles Robertson, for example. He's lived in the same house (with the same gravel driveway) for 43 years. He got his first ticket last week.
"I just can't reach into my magic box of tricks and get 5 or 6 grand to pave my driveway," he said.
Appeal
Not everyone agrees with the Mayor, however. City Councilman Michael Collins has collected many of the parking citations and has pledged to have the tickets rescinded.
"If we have time for this Mickey Mouse nonsense something is radically wrong with that," Councilman Collins said.
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