Angelika We couldn't believe our eyes: Last year in the fall, diligent little elves covered the street cleaning signs with a sticker in our neighborhood, which suddenly indicated that street cleaning would only take place twice a month. It wasn't a prank by frustrated parkers who were tired of having to move their cars weekly to avoid the street cleaning vehicles or paying a now $50 fine. No, the city had decided to save money and send the street sweeper through certain streets in 20 selected neighborhoods only twice a month (Rundbrief 05/2008).
Relatively clean neighborhoods without much littering on the streets made it onto the shortlist. Our neighborhood, "Noe Valley," was included. We rubbed our hands with delight because, with clever planning, we can theoretically leave our old car, the "PERLMAN," parked in the same spot for two weeks now. However, the new rule requires more calculation, as in our neighborhood, the street is now cleaned on the second and fourth weekday X of the month. Depending on the street, X is either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday. Michael immediately took action and hung a calendar with the specific dates on our front door, right below the city map with the street cleaning weekdays color-coded for our neighborhood.
Haha, I can already hear the outcry from the attentive readership: "But what about the 72-hour rule? As reported in Rundbrief 03/2009, it states that the car must be moved after this period. Well, by now we have figured out which street the spies are sitting on, who have nothing better to do all day than to watch who parks when and for how long, and to call them in. We simply avoid these streets and park where people with common sense live, who don't care about such things.
But, unfortunately, the city miscalculated a bit. The savings from reduced street sweeping do not compensate for the lost revenue from fewer issued parking tickets! The parking ticket officers can now only issue tickets half as often, and this creates a huge hole in the city's budget.
The "San Francisco Chronicle," the city's most well-known daily newspaper, reported in April that in the 20 districts, 26% fewer parking tickets were issued during street cleaning between October and December. If this continues, the city will lose a whopping 3.8 million dollars per year, but in return, it will only save 1 million dollars in cleaning costs. Ouch, that hurts!