Is the City's 311 Service 'Irrelevant'? (Or, My Parking Hassle)

-- I have great respect for public employees who do their jobs well, and there are a great many of them. They are generally not paid all that much, and they often have to deal with unpleasant and unreasonable members of the public.

-- I have great confidence that the particular situation I'm writing about will be resolved, as subsequent to the events outlined below I have talked to other people at the city who assure me that one way or another the various issues will be addressed. I appreciate that. In general my experiences with the public employees of both Knoxville and Knox County have been positive ones.

That said, here's the basic problem: A lot of the city's electronic parking meters do not work very well. This seems to be particularly true on cold days. Depending on the day and my work schedule, I usually park at the 10-hour meters on either Central or the Gay Street viaduct. I park in those spaces for the same reasons I assume other people do: They're cheap, just 15 cents an hour, and I don't mind the walk to the office. But, particularly as the weather has turned colder, I have many times had meters not register coins when I put them in. Sometimes you have to put in 75 cents to get 25 cents worth of time on the meter. This is annoying. I have reported the problem multiple times via the city's 311 line, and each time the people at 311 (who are always polite and attentive) have promised to forward the information to somebody.

I do not know what has happened subsequent to those reports, but I continue to encounter the same problem with the meters. Sometimes I have just moved my car to a different spot, though a.) there is not always another open spot; and b.) this is annoying because by that point of course I have already put some money into the meter and had it not show up, which is the only way you can tell the meter is not working. Sometimes I have just kept plugging extra money in until it registers, but this is annoying too, for obvious reasons. If I wanted to spend that much to park, I could just go to one of the garages. Sometimes I have left notes on my windshield trying to explain the situation to any parking-enforcement officer who happens by. Sometimes I have called 311.

I did the latter on Wednesday, after parking at meter #857 on the Gay Street Viaduct. I put in enough coins to pay for nine hours, which would have taken me past 6 p.m., when parking on city streets becomes free. But the meter registered only 3 hours and 20 minutes worth of time. I had already locked the car and didn't feel like digging back into it for more change, plus I was irritated by the continued problem with these meters and didn't feel like subsidizing their malfunctions by putting more and more coins in. So I called the city's public-help line. As usual, the woman who answered the phone was polite and helpful. I gave her all the information and asked what I should do. She gave me a reference number for the call, and said if I got a parking ticket, to give that reference number in order to have the ticket excused. I wrote down the number and thanked her.

Okay, so. Not surprisingly, I got a parking ticket. Fair enough. So first thing Thursday morning, I took it to the Public Safety Building. I should note that I have in the past year been given two other parking tickets, both of which were legitimate and were my fault, and I paid both of them the day after receiving them. I don't like to let these things lie around. At the Safety Building, I talked with a clerk named Sara (or Sarah, not sure of the spelling). I handed over the ticket and carefully explained the situation and was about to give her my 311 reference number when she just gave me a dead-eyed shrug and said, a.) 311 had no authority and the reference number didn't mean anything to her; and b.) she would have the meter people check the meter, but if they said it was okay, I was going to have to pay the ticket (which was either for $11 or $14, I don't remember). I backtracked and tried to explain to her again that these meters don't work very well, especially when it's cold, and so whether or not the meter was working whenever someone went to check had no bearing on whether or not it was working on Wednesday morning. And if she would please take my 311 reference number, she could check the call and verify that, in fact, I had reported this very problem as soon as I encountered it. She again said that 311 had nothing to do with any of this and it didn't matter what I had told them. I asked her if she really thought I was going to all this trouble just because I hadn't wanted to pay an extra couple quarters to park. She shrugged and said I would have to pay the ticket if the meter was working when someone went to look at it. 

At this point, I admit that I got irritated. Like I said, I respect public employees who do their job well. I have a bit of an issue with public employees who forget that they are supposed to be providing a service. I asked Sara for her name, but she would give me only her first name (she covered up her name badge when I tried to squint through the window to read it). I told her that I was trying to be a good citizen here: I had paid sufficient money into the parking meter to cover my use of the space provided by the city for public parking, I had promptly reported the mechanical problem via the phone service that the city explicitly makes available for such civic concerns, and I had dutifully written down the reference number that I had been told to provide in the event of a problem, and what she, Sara, as a public employee should do is figure out how to resolve this problem. Even if it couldn't be dealt with immediately, it would have been nice to hear something like, "I'm sorry, we'll look into it, we'll get this taken care of." Instead she told me I could call back next week to find out if I was going to have to pay the ticket. I told her there was no way I was going to pay the ticket. I asked her if she thought I was lying about the meter not working. She shrugged.

I left, not happy, my morning not off to a good start. I called 311 again, this time to ask who to complain to about poor service from a Safety Building employee. The helpful person at 311 directed me to Richard Wingate, Sara's boss, and provided me with his phone number. I called him, and to his credit, he did call me back a few minutes later. But after I ran through the entire scenario for him (I was getting very tired of explaining this), he was no more helpful. He told me that if a meter isn't working, "You just need to park somewhere else." I told him that the problem is that by the time you know one of these meters isn't working, you've already put money into it, which is kind of annoying. He said that was just too bad. He also said, "You can always park in a parking lot." I asked him if that was official city policy: if city services aren't working the way they are supposed to, you're just supposed to go somewhere else. I noted that these parking spaces are paid for and maintained on public space by city residents (of which I happen to be one), for public use. He was not interested. I asked him who was responsible for the maintenance of the parking meters. He seemed vague on this, but suggested the city Engineering Department. I asked him who specifically. He said he had no idea. I asked if he at least had a phone number. He said I could "look it up on the Internet." 

I also asked him if he was telling me that he or his employees had no authority to dismiss the parking ticket, that I was going to have to go all the way to court to get the stupid thing resolved. He told me they had the authority, they just weren't going to, because it was "unjustified." I asked what he meant by that. I referred again to the 311 call and noted that I had done exactly what I had been told to do by the person at 311. If 311 had told me I'd better move my car or try to put more money in the meter or whatever, I would have done that. But they didn't. He said it didn't matter what 311 said, because "311 is irrelevant." I asked if he meant that the entire 311 system funded by city taxpayers is irrelevant. He said no. Just in this case. He said they shouldn't be telling people what they told me. I suggested that whether that was true or not, that sounded like something for him to resolve with them. In this case all I had to go on was what I was told. He told me our conversation was over. I asked him if he would at least take  my 311 reference number. He refused.

Here's the thing: I'm not going to pay this ticket. That will be the net result of this whole thing, and that should have been clear to both Sara and Mr. Wingate. If the issue is whether or not the city will get  money of mine that it doesn't deserve, purely because city-owned equipment does not function as it is supposed to, the answer is obvious: no. That's not going to happen. But instead of recognizing that upfront and providing good, courteous service to somebody who is merely trying to be a dutiful citizen, they made the experience unnecessarily unpleasant, took an hour out of my workday, and irritated me so much that I've spent another half-hour venting via this blog post. If the response at the front end had been a simple, "I'm sorry, we'll look into it and get back to you," everybody's time would have been spared and we would all be in better moods.

Anyway, I really hope someone can make those meters work better. It's annoying, in case I haven't made that clear. And for the record? My 311 reference number is 38254.