Here's something I found kind of interesting. If you didn't
see Saturday's story – click right smack here for that bad boy – then here's the
down and dirty: Knox County Commissioners and Knoxville City Council members
are expected to talk about postponing a fee increase of $12.50 for about 615
government workers who park in the garage under the ol' Deathstar.
Now for the interesting/unusual/makes-me-scratch-my-head
part.
The folks who have handicapped placards or plates for their
car(s) don't have to pay to park. That's cool. It's state law. Whatever.
But the breakdown is certainly curious.
The county has 120 employees who have the placards/plates.
The city has seven.
Heh. Yeah.
Right now you'd be
hard pressed to get anyone to talk publicly about it, but there's quite a few
folks who aren't happy about this. They're wondering whether everyone who has a
placard really needs one.
Of course, what are you going to do? Start harassing someone
you think is scamming the system only to find out they’re really disabled? Good
luck with that.
Still, scoring one of these placards is not all that hard. I
mean look how easy it is to get pain pills around here. Or a driver's license
if you're an illegal.
In the meantime, keep in mind that even though someone
doesn't appear disabled, there are legitimate “invisible” disabilities.
120 out of 615, or 127 out of 615?
ReplyDeleteIn other words, that "615" number you mentioned for "government parkers" - are those 615 county employees, or a combined 615 county AND city employees?
Either way, it's a little over 19% of the aforementioned. Kind of a high number. But hey, it surely can't be the good-ol'-boy politics everyone thought we got rid of in '07 only to consistently re-elect in different guises since.
Right?
And you actively want to immerse yourself in this kind of stuff, Donila? I know the pay's not great, so that just leaves insanity and/or a rampant unchecked substance abuse problem as the only remaining explanations.
I mean, you're not dumb.