TRAVELERS’ CHECK : Lawyers top scofflaw list for parking
Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/184981/
Toran Menifee spends his days on the Fayetteville Square and along Dickson Street, seeking out illegal parkers.
“I don’t mind hitting the same people over and over,” said Menifee, the city’s parking enforcement officer for nine years. “You break the rules, and I write the ticket.”
Menifee gives so many tickets to the same nine people that he’s memorized their tag numbers. When he sees attorney Ken Shemin’s white Volvo or the gray Acura that he used to drive, he knows both tags.
It’s bad when the meter guy knows your tag by heart.
Shemin, who gets more parking tickets than any person in Benton or Washington counties, promised The Guru last week that he’d clean up his act.
After paying more than $ 5, 000 in fines for 529 tickets written over six years on the two cars he’s driven, Shemin bought a permanent parking place Wednesday at Town Center, a day after The Guru called.
“I feel bad about it,” Shemin said. “We’re not going to do it anymore.”
Parking is less of an issue in Springdale, Bentonville and Rogers. They don’t have parking meters.
Rogers has issued just 47 parking tickets since Jan. 1, 2006, mostly for parking in fire lanes or handicap spaces.
Bentonville doesn’t have a parking ordinance after a federal judge deemed its former law unconstitutional in 2003, said Camille Thompson, a Bentonville staff attorney. The city, at then-Mayor Terry Coberly’s directive, didn’t rewrite it.
While Shemin’s cars hold the first two spots on The Guru’s list of who’s who among the ticketed, architect Marlon Blackwell is third (181 tickets ) and attorney John Mikesch is fourth (177 ).
Attorney Beth Bryan, who shares office space with Shemin, ranks fifth (176 ).
The next five vehicles were registered to Courthouse Concepts, a business on the Square (163 ); Mary Tucker, who The Guru couldn’t track down because she dared to have a common name (162 ); KNWA-TV employee Sarah Noblin (159 ); her KNWA co-worker Jennifer Griggy (149 ); and jeweler David Adams (147 ).
They all pay their fines.
“I didn’t know I was on a list,” said Noblin, who’s on the television station’s sales staff. “I don’t want to be on a list.”
Fines are $ 5 for each of the first five tickets in a month. Subsequent fines in the month increase to $ 25 each. Sharon Crosson, the city’s parking and telecommunications manager, calls them “supertickets.”
“It’s a fine line you walk, because we don’t want to make the parking fine so high that we run customers off, or the downtown will die and everybody will go to the mall,” Crosson said. “If you make them too low, all the employees park there, there’s nothing for the customers, and you still have a problem.”
Six of the habitually bad parkers didn’t realize they’d paid so much in fines, and a couple said they’ll consider buying permanent spaces.
The Guru figures he’ll check in a few months just to make sure Menifee doesn’t know those same tag numbers by heart. Robert J. Smith, aka The Guru, writes on traffic issues each Friday. He can be reached at gridlockgur u@arkansasonline. com or www. nwanews. com / gridlockguru.