Under the Sun
Everybody wants services
but nobody wants to payIN some neighborhoods of Missoula, a college town in western Montana, you can't park a car on the street unless you have a permit. The regulation is designed to discourage students and those who work nearby from taking up space that residents feel belongs to them.
While the roads are clear of vehicles from outside the quarter, the system presents problems even for people who live there. A woman who was taking a bunch of visiting journalists on a sightseeing tour had to make a stop at her home, but because she was driving a borrowed, unpermitted car, she had to call her husband and have him move their permitted car onto the street so she could pull up in their driveway.
On the way to Seeley Lake, she recounted how the system had divided the community. Students and people who lived outside the area complained that they had as much right to use all of the town's byways as people who lived nearby. Residents contended that their property taxes entitled them to a neighborhood free of car clutter. Outsiders predictably argued that they, too, paid taxes.
The matter was "resolved" by the town issuing permits and charging a fee for them. This didn't please students and others who said the fee was essentially another tax and excluded a class of people, mainly those who couldn't afford to pay.
People who live near the University of Hawaii might sympathize with the Missoula neighborhood. Scarce campus parking dispatches hundreds of commuter-students through the narrow streets to hunt for space. In some areas, cars are lined up hood to bumper, often within inches of driveways and intersections. I guess I'd be annoyed if getting to and from my garage became a dicey maneuver.
As tourism founders in a post-9/11 environment further destabilized by war, the state is struggling to make ends meet. Governor Lingle has had to direct budget cuts, even from such programs as public education that taxpayers feel should be spared. Government is reducing services and eliminating projects and proposing increases in taxes and fees. Meanwhile, unhappy taxpayers complain that they already give over enough of their paychecks.
Be that as it may, demands on government have increased, too. Defusing the threat of terrorism is costing billions of dollars, but if we want homeland security we have no choice but to spend the money. Other services taxpayers desire, although not as dramatic, cost money, too. Want curbside recycling? How about a world-class zoo, more highways to cut commuting time, well-maintained parks and underground power lines? There's a price for these. Want more community skate parks and swimming pools, a police substation and more cops, help for the homeless, mass transit? Open your wallets wider.
Some contend that there would be no need for higher taxes if those gosh-darn government employees worked faster and harder. Efficiency is necessary, but as Hawaii's population grows there are more people flushing toilets into sewers and pumping water from reservoirs, more who put children in public classrooms, who have their trash picked up, more getting their automobiles registered and adding wear and tear to the highways with them. Even if every public worker is a model of efficiency, more people equals more demands, and more demands equal more costs.
The Missoula parking plan sounds good -- until we acknowledge that we can't have a permit system without a government worker processing a request and issuing a decal while another walks the neighborhood to check that those who have parked hold permits.
As taxpayers, we are entitled. We're entitled to a defense network that fights wars for us, for government regulations and agencies that protect us from unscrupulous businesses that may try to sell us products that don't work or that could possibly harm us. We're entitled to emergency workers who put out fires and rescue hikers and stranded boaters, to judges and prosecutors and police officers who put crooks in jail.
We get a lot more than this for our money, but we can't have it all unless we pay for it all.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for 25 years.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.