Drivers in a fine mess
It is a little known fact that anyone can nominate anybody for a Nobel Prize, and in that spirit I hereby nominate Joe Rezzai, who yesterday, at approximately 12:47 p.m., in front of Caffe Paradiso on Hanover Street in the North End, performed one of the most selfless acts in the course of human history.
Joe Rezzai saved a fellow citizen from getting a ticket.
"Hey, the guy's just across the street," Rezzai told the meter butler who was about to ring up a Ford Taurus.
The guy came racing across Hanover, apologizing profusely, before leaping into his car and inching away in embarrassed gratitude.
The man from the Transportation Department wouldn't give me his name. Probably for fear that he'd be executed at dawn on City Hall Plaza for showing mercy to a mere HRE, or human revenue enhancer.
After all, mercy don't pay no bills.
"I gotta give that meter guy credit," Joe Rezzai was saying, returning to his cigarette and a cup of espresso. "Most of 'em would never give you a break. They sneak up and write the ticket even if you're sitting there in the driver's seat with the car running."
Joe Rezzai is a chef. Unlike most 34-year-old guys who are gainfully employed, he doesn't own a car. He got rid of it because he was tired of paying tickets.
"They got me once for parking in a residential spot. I was living in the North End, but I didn't have a sticker yet," he said. "Some of 'em I deserved, a lot of 'em I didn't. I just got sick of it. The city's losing money on the deal. They made more money off my excise tax than they did ticketing me, but now they don't get the excise."
Rezzai thinks the mayor's plan to raise, and in some cases more than double, parking fines is just one more burden for city residents - and one more reason for suburbanites not to come into town.
Aside from maybe detonating a huge stink bomb over the marathon route on Patriots Day, I can't think of anything that would do more to enhance the city's reputation as non-user-friendly than jacking up parking fines. If you plead guilty to stabbing somebody, the court costs are sometimes less than the 85 bucks they want to charge you for parking too close to a crosswalk.
"You know what we need?" Joe Rezzai was saying. "We need more parking garages. But they won't build more parking lots because then the city couldn't ticket as many people and make money. It's all about the money."
Even the mayor wouldn't disagree with that. Boston is a small town, and so it was not that surprising that, a few blocks up, I bumped into Thomas M. Menino as he exited the Florentine Cafe at the corner of Prince and Hanover streets.
Because I care deeply about the life and limb of our glorious leader, I advised hizzoner to avoid popping into Caffe Paradiso for a quick cappuccino.
You may find this shocking, but the mayor got defensive. He said raising the fines is long overdue. He said some, like parking in a fire lane, hadn't been raised for 17 years. He said it's his duty to pay the bills. "How else am I going to raise money?" the mayor asked.
It's all about the Benjamins. It certainly isn't about the Dominics.
Dominic Campochiaro is an electrician. He figures he coughs up about $3,500 a year to the city coffers in tickets.
"I'd say a third of the time I deserve a ticket," he was saying while working a job off Fleet Street. "But what am I gonna do? Go to City Hall and fight the others? I can't. I'm working."
So are the meter maids and butlers of the city. Like beavers.
If every other department in the city was as ruthlessly efficient as Transportation, we wouldn't need Transportation.
Hmmm. Now there's an idea.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com
