Parking fines !

" If it 'aint broke - don't fix it ! "

That seems to apply to the question of on-street parking in the city of Wollongong.

Today's headlines scream of a huge increase in parking fines from 2002-03, when just 2143 parking tickets were issued, to a hefty 13,128 in the year ending June 30 - bringing in $ 1.5 million for city coffers - and increase of half a million on last year.

The city now has eight rangers issuing those fines, and is calling tenders for 840 parking meters, which will represent metered parking in ten percent of available city parking areas.

That all sounds very impressive - until we think back and remember that city parking was then controlled by the police. In that respect, it took a very low priority in their allocation of duty time.

Then came the most amazing bungle of all. Parking management passed from the police to the council, but there was a dispute over who actually got the money from fines - and for several years neither party issued tickets for over staying limits.

Most people remember that as the time when Wollongong did not have a parking problem. People simply parked for as long as they needed to do their shopping - and then moved on.

What we have now - and what we are about to get - is the need of our council to extract more funds from the citizens. It has absolutely nothing to do with regulating parking - and each year when the parking fine figures are released we can expect new records to be set.

So - let us not kid ourselves. We pay Federal taxes and we pay state taxes in many forms - and the cash registers in Burelli street are being tuned to receive an ever increasing city tax.

Why ? Because that is the way of the twenty-first century !