Letters to the Editor: A writer’s parking ticket woes get little sympathy from readers

To the editor: My first reading of Lesley Turner’s op-ed article had me feeling sympathetic for her and her story of her car being towed for having numerous outstanding parking tickets. Her proposed solution is to stop towing cars whose drivers rack up outstanding parking ticket debt.

But thinking a little more, I wondered what the effect would be of thousands of cars illegally parked on our streets with no recourse to remove them. Our neighborhoods would be clogged with illegally parked cars.

She said she owed more than $3,000 to the city in past parking penalties, and the debt has since doubled. Wouldn’t it be a little wiser for her to try to find a rental unit that has a parking space for her?

Robert Newman, West Hills

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To the editor: I very much sympathize with Turner.

When I moved to a large city in New York, I quickly got two parking tickets exactly in the way that Turner got hers — on street-cleaning days. If you live in a city, you do one of two things: pay for parking or pay for parking tickets.

Fortunately, able to afford a space in a parking garage, my bleed stopped at two tickets. But I remained angry because the system was so clearly designed to raise revenue. It is a tax on people who cannot afford to buy or rent a garage space.

Stuart Gallant, Belmont, Mass.

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To the editor: There is enough real poverty and despair in the world without Turner blaming poverty for her failure to follow simple parking rules.

We all hate parking rules, we all get caught, and some of us even get towed. But that is on us, not society.

If Turner wants to change things, perhaps she can start by reading and following the parking rules like the rest of us and stop blaming society for what is her own personal issue.

Jim Dragna, Carpinteria