Dawn breaks across downtown Santa Fe and the sunlight from the mountains chases shadows from the alleys and awakens the appetites of the city's 1,000 one-eyed, change-sucking monsters.
Feeding time begins promptly at 8 am, but the meters have been calling out for sustenance throughout the night: One thousand greedy, bloodshot eyes, blinking and blinking. "Expired" in their primitive vocabulary means: "Feed me."
So far, the meters species have thrived in their downtown habitat. Drivers fight for the right to feed them; there's just not enough to parking spaces to go around. Parking enforcement officers monitor the city's meter farm every hour, 10 hours a day, to make sure all are properly nourished. Together, the meters and their masters generated nearly $1 million in coins and an estimated $687,000 in parking fines and penalties in 2007.
Now, however, like the buffaloes and plains before them, the parking meters' Eden is threatened by development.
In April, the city will open two new parking garages in the Railyard, one above ground, one below. The enclosures will house 27 "Pay & Display" super-meters that can devour the fees from a whole block's worth of parking spots. These behemoths will eat anything: coins, bills, plastic. And that's just the start. The city is also opening the Civic Center parking garage, and several other government and private facilities will be built downtown in the foreseeable future.
For the city's meters, a trip to the bolt factory is both an inconvenient and inevitable truth. The saddest part is, they're paying for their own extinction.
Just like its siblings, Meter #1039 has an hourglass figure and one long leg. What distinguishes it to the eye is how its pole leans hungrily toward West San Francisco Street. What distinguishes it to the city bookkeepers is the pocket change in its belly: #1039 is the cement snake that lays the golden eggs.
Fed properly-$1 per hour, 10 hours a day, six days a week, 301 days per year-a single parking meter should swallow a maximum of $3,010. Last year, #1039 gobbled up $1,410 more than its share, the equivalent of 23 extra weeks of service. In fact, all of the city's most profitable meters share that stretch of West San Francisco streetscape.
Valerie Fairchild hadn't given much thought to #1039, or any of the other meters in front of her jewelry shop. She parks her employees in the Sandoval Parking Garage and besides, what's a buck in quarters when one is in the market for a $49,500 6-karat cognac diamond ring? She had no clue #1039 was so ravenous.
"I'm glad something is making money," Fairchild says. "It's winter and no one's visiting and there's no parking and you can't drive anywhere and everything is torn up."
Her evaluation concurs with city statistics: December through February is the starving season for parking meters as well.
Off the top of her head, Fairchild has a couple of theories about #1039's magnetism. First: Starbucks'coffee fiends coming and going. Her second guess: its proximity to the Plaza and the row of shops that include the Plaza Mercado.
Santa Fe Parking Division Director Bill Hon offers a third explanation: Tourists just overpay, he says. They pay before 8 am, after 6 pm and on Sundays. In other words, suckers who fall for the meters' 24-hour illusion of authority make up for the largely unused meters on other streets, such as Manhattan Avenue.
If meters could talk, perhaps #1039 would share the secrets of its success. Then again, maybe it would demand a cut of the take and a decked-out night on the town.
Fairchild & Co. Jewelers doesn't care whether a client is flesh or metal if it's got $4,400 in currency.
"A tiara would be lovely on a parking meter, as long as it doesn't keep the money from going in it," Fairchild says. "I think it needs something of a contrast, something bright, like brightly colored stones, to remind that it's there waiting for you to pay it."
Something else is out there waiting for the coin to drop: a force of parking enforcement officers based out of the US Post Office building.
The city's PEOs are like zookeepers in a bizarro-world nature reserve where they have to prevent visitors from not feeding the animals. The dangers they face in their cageless zoo aren't from the beasts they monitor, but from the humans who get downright savage when they see that flapping yellow slip of paper.
The
bad boys, bad boys
of parking enforcement inspired a reality show similar to
COPS
, with approximately the same ratio of guns, crack and lunatics. A&E's Parking Wars stars the Philadelphia Parking Authority and its crews of ticketers, booters, towers and impound-lot attendants who face, on a daily basis, what New York Times TV critic Ginia Bellafante calls "stationary road rage."
It's the same all across the country, Santa Fe PEOs Adrian Ulibarri and Carla Tafoya say. Of course, here it's on a much, much smaller scale.
"On busier days, you get the more irate people because they can't find a parking space and when they finally go get something, it's where they're not supposed to be," Ulibarri says, steering his city-issued Lumina onto Paseo de Peralta. "During the session, you get those people especially."
The duo's assigned area for the day includes the Roundhouse, where the Legislature is hurrying up and waiting to pass the state budget. Looking at it one way, the session makes it easier for parking enforcement officers. The state reserves dozens of parking spaces and has thrown red hoods over the meters' heads. Ulibarri says orders have come down from up high that they're not to be too strict with the meters around the capitol building. That means fewer $16 citations.
On the other hand, regular day-to-day employees are displaced and, subsequently, they plant their cars illegally in yellow no-parking zones. That means more $60 tickets, which can be issued every 20 minutes. That, in turn, means more confrontations.
"You do get a lot of verbal abuse," Tafoya says good-humoredly. "Instead of abusing us, they could just say they're sorry. We're more understanding than people there think because we don't get anything out of giving tickets. We don't mind giving people the benefit of the doubt, but when you start yelling at us, making us feel like our job is basically worthless…"
She stops mid-sentence. They've spotted a violator.
Ulibarri shifts into park and leaves the engine running. They each grab their hand-held ticket printers and hop out. They look like they're on a Star Trek "away mission," scanning each automobile for life with their tricorders. The devices tell them everything about the driver's parking history. If a car's got more than five unpaid tickets, they have to call in the cavalry on the scofflaw.
"You get to know the people who just totally disregard the whole system and so they get tickets every hour," Tafoya says. "The next thing you know, they're on The List and they end up getting booted or towed."
The meters in front of the Hotel St. Francis on Don Gaspar Avenue are the most ticketed in the city. In 2007, parkers along that strip earned 2,456 parking tickets worth almost $40,000 in fines. General Manager Steve Caalin tells SFR the tickets are more likely attributable to the hotel's employees than to its guests.
That's because guests receive free parking along the side of the hotel or, if that's full, the hotel will cover half the cost of parking in the city lot across the street. The hotel's 80 employees, however, have to fend for themselves.
Municipal Court Judge Ann Yalman says employment isn't a valid reason to ignore the city's meters, should a violator challenge a citation in her court.
"You would be surprised at the number of people who come to court for very small fines, absolutely surprised," Yalman says. "The most interesting thing about parking court is that although it is the least serious of all the matters I deal with, it brings out more explanations than any other kinds of charges."
She takes them on a case-by-case basis during the one day of the month dedicated to parking violations. Most offenders get discouraged at the initial pre-trial hearing, but plenty stick it through to the bitter end. She won't take inability to pay as an excuse; she can set a payment schedule or assign community service.
"People seem to get more righteous about going over the two-hour limit than the people who have DUIs and possession and everything else," Yalman says. "People feel that they're entitled to park in a way that they don't feel an entitlement about anything else. They're entitled to park exactly next to where they want to be. Nobody believes in walking very far."
On the street, people are far more
emphatic
, Ulibarri and Tafoya say. Especially on Aztec Street.
As an experiment, in December SFR began parking on Aztec without paying the meter at various times of day on various days of the week. It took five weeks for a parking ticket to land on the windshield.
"That's probably one of the toughest streets to go down; that's probably why you didn't get one," Tafoya says. "Nobody wanted confrontation that day. I usually don't go down there because you're going to be told something. At that little café there, people seem to be anti-government."
Parking Division Director Bill Hon confirms that the side street where Aztec Café is located is known department-wide as Santa Fe's dark alley. It's a no man's land that some PEOs go out of their way to avoid.
"I think that's ridiculous," café owner Sarah Wilhelm says, "because they come by several times a week and give out tickets."
In fact, most meter routes are monitored several times a day, if not every hour.
"You've got that coffee shop over there and when they come down the street, people will come out and they'll actually start confrontations with the officers," Hon says. "They'll basically treat them bad, call them names, tell them to 'get a real job, get off the street, quit harassing people that are just trying to get a cup of coffee.' Because of that, some of the officers feel timid about going down and trying to enforce."
Tafoya says customers idling outside the Aztec Café called her a "parking Nazi."
"I've actually heard that term, but you know, it's kind of funny," Wilhelm says.
Fear isn't an excuse, Hon says; those meters still have to be enforced. PEOs are told to pair up with a buddy before wandering down Aztec.
"What, did my customers throw rocks at them or something?" Wilhelm asks.
Not quite, but officers have been assaulted more than once on that street, Hon says. Tafoya has her own harrowing tale.
"A couple months ago, I was on Aztec and I'd given someone a ticket," Tafoya says. "He followed me back to the vehicle and wouldn't let me back up. And then he jumped on the hood of the vehicle and was staring at me through the windshield."
The guy, Tafoya says, skedaddled when she reached for her radio to call the police.
"Oh, come on!" Wilhelm says. "The Aztec's had a bad rap from years ago for being a place where bad people hang out and I worked really hard to make that different. I just don't see people behaving that way at all. Whatever. Nobody likes a parking attendant. I don't know that you can necessarily say that it's my patrons."
According to Parking Division records, the two parking meters in front of the Aztec Café are among the most frequently sabotaged meters in the city. At least three times a week, one of them will break down, often because they've been stuffed with pennies, paper clips, folded bits of paper or even leaves.
"That's them venting back and saying they're anti-goverment, so they're going to jam the meters," Tafoya says.
Ulibarri adds, "And if they're jammed, there's really not much we can do. We call maintenance and wait for them to fix it and go again."
To be fair, Aztec Street customers have a right to a little civil disobedience. There are only eight spots at which to park on the street and the only other meters are on Guadalupe Street, which has hardly been accessible this year because of all the poorly timed road construction. Parking, or lack thereof, Wilhelm says, is the No. 1 reason people tell her they don't frequent her café and, therefore, they're very mindful to make the most of what they have. Employees (and customers who know the score) park behind the café. Barristas can always break a bill for the meter. And there's an unspoken lookout code among the regulars: If a regular sees the parking officers coming on his way out, he'll call back and warn everyone. Vandalism, Wilhelm says, just isn't in their nature.
"My clientele is very hardworking," Wilhelm says. "They're honest people and I know a lot of them very well and they're not hoodlums."
The meters in front of the Plaza Starbucks bite at tourists. At Aztec Café, locals may or may not be biting back. But at a third downtown coffee shop, Ecco on Marcy Street, downtown workers are made to swallow the worst of it.
The high-traffic/rent-return nature of the DVD lending business forces the Video Library on Marcy Street to reserve its four parking spaces for its customers. The store's workers, including its owner, Lisa Harris, have to park on the metered street.
For employees making Santa Fe's $9.50 per hour living wage, the meters are like parasites sucking 10 percent off their salaries with each eight-hour shift.
"The biggest deal is having to move it every two hours or you get a ticket," employee Emily Montoya says, "which is ridiculous because it gets busy and you can't get away and even if you move the car you're taking up a space downtown. You can pull it forward one space and apparently that's OK."
Under a Santa Fe parking ordinance, not only do meters need to be fed every two hours, but they have to be fed by someone else.
"I've done it where I had to go to the bank and the only spot left was the one I'd left," Harris says. "I just put up a big note saying, 'PLEASE, I tried to find another one!'"
Harris estimates her employees, collectively, are ticketed once a week. For the unlucky employee who overstays his or her meter's welcome, the $27 is the equivalent of a whole morning in wages lost.
Not all downtown businesses have the same plight. Fairchild & Co. Jewelers pays for its employees to park in the Sandoval Parking Garage. Collected Works Bookstore has also purchased several November-May seasonal garage passes for some of its employees; the others walk, ride bikes or just pay $9 a day to park in the public garage.
None of those options are feasible for Video Library's early morning and late-night workers, Harris says, nor is, as one PEO suggested, parking up the road at Fort Marcy Park.
"When I come to work I'm unloading about 80 pounds worth of crap and then when they leave at night it's like after 10 pm," Harris says. She gestures to her young employee, Montoya, "And I really want her walking down to that park alone in the dark? Oh yeah?"
By the end of the year, however, the end of the meter scourge may be in sight. In August, the city will open the Civic Center parking garage two blocks west of the Video Library. Harris says she'd rather stick to the street.
"I could see maybe if the first level was open I might utilize it, but I'm never going to trek down three or four flights into the pit that I saw being built," she says. "I'm not parking down there, I just can tell. I am not parking down there."
In 1995, the city commissioned a study to determine Santa Fe's parking needs. Twelve years later, the study's projections show the city is still 1,600 spots short of what it needs to be a truly functioning downtown area, according to Hon.
By the end of the year, the city will have closed that deficit to 200 spots with the opening of three new garages: the 500-space underground Civic Center garage plus the 400-space underground and 500-space above-ground garages at the Railyard.
"But it's not a deficit that you look at and see on a daily basis," Hon says. "People are going to come downtown and they're going to be driving around and can't find a place to park like they do now on Federal Street…They'll pull in and park in the Civic Center parking lot."
In another couple of years, with new multilevel garages from the state, county, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and First National Bank, there may even be a surplus of spaces, he says.
"But I don't think there's going to be an abundance either," Hon adds. "I don't think that at any one given time, people are going to be standing around going, 'Wow, we've got 1,200 parking spaces available and not enough people to fill 'em.'"
A few years after that, there may be no coin meters at all.
The Parking Division has purchased 27 "Pay & Display" meters to road test at the Railyard. Each $10,000 box can handle 30 parking spots and accept credit cards, cash keys, tokens, bills and coins. If they play well with the city's drivers, the Plaza's meters-the city's most profitable-will be the first ones yanked and replaced.
"With a standard parking meter, I'm installing 30 pieces of equipment on the street," Hon says. "So an electronic "Pay & Display" reduces the meter clutter. People don't have to walk around and see all these meter poles sticking up out of the sidewalk all around the Plaza."
But in the end, it also depends on how much money the new meters make.
The Parking Division is a city "enterprise" and, therefore, a business. It has to fund itself as well as all its new projects, from the parking garages to the free shuttle service Hon says will run a route from the Railyard to downtown. The $5 million budget is straining as it is, with only $1.2 million left of its $3.5 million in cash reserves. When the one-sixteenth gross-receipt-tax increase finally goes into effect, it will help alleviate its share of the Railyard burden. When the tourist season picks up, the investments will pay for themselves.
In the meantime, the city needs revenue. Quarter, nickels, dimes that will buy new hand-held ticket-printers with built-in digital cameras, pay their newest boot-and-tow employees and, ultimately, mitigate the misery that is non-moving violations in Santa Fe.
And with patience, care and proper feeding, the city's meters will eat themselves into extinction.
Santa Fe Reporter