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Meter Made
Summary: Where are you most likely to get a parking ticket? Reporter: Rick Earle, WPXI Channel 11 Airtime: 2 minute, 30 seconds on Nov. 12 Highlights: * When Earle proclaims, “Parking meters are a big business! Now, we obtained parking-ticket data for suburban communities in our area, and tonight, we’ve come up with the exclusive list of where you’re most likely to get a parking ticket if you don’t feed the meter in time.” * When Earle points us to a woman he says may be “one of the most despised people in Sewickley” and calls her “the meter maid.” * When Earle counts down the top suburban communities for ticketing: “At number five on our list: Homestead, where [who cares without comparative, per capita data?] were handed out last year. Next, Wilkinsburg with [insert scary number here]. Number three — Bridgeville, with [another meaningless number]. Next, Sewickley, at [why don’t you just guess?], where some business owners say the aggressive enforcement is bad for business.” * When a business owner says, “[T]hey have to make money. [But] we can’t pay our rent … if people are always worried about the meter.” * When Earle reports, “[I]n Sewickley, parking tickets and meters generated more than $300,000 last year. … But Sewickley is not the top spot for parking tickets.” * When Earle reveals that the No. 1 slot belongs to Mount Lebanon, where — OK, I’ll give you this one — 21,983 parking tickets were issued last year. * When we meet an outspoken man flailing his arms in indignation: “I gotta go to my car now and throw some quarters in ’cause I’m worried about the parking mafia coming after me. … Without us coming to have meals, this whole area shuts down. So, it doesn’t really make sense.” * When Rich Sahar, the executive director of Mount Lebanon’s parking authority, jokes, “There’s only one [parking enforcement officer] out there. We don’t have five of them sitting in the bush waiting for people.” He then says the only thing that makes sense in this story: “It actually does help the businesses in that we don’t have people parking all day in front of the store. So customers can get in and out.” What We Learned: That if you don’t pay for parking, you may actually get a ticket. Unanswered Question: “Parking mafia”? How long before these government officials end up on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard? News Value: Expired. I wish I could give Earle a citation for this story. I know they made him do this for sweeps, but showing us a bunch of numbers in a BIG POINT SIZE really doesn’t tell us much
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2010.
