Boston Herald- Pols should park Ego For Haystack App
The City Council — as well as Mayor Marty Walsh — is poised to ban the Baltimore-based app from expanding into Boston with its service allowing anyone with a parking space to sell access to that space. In other words, if you’re just about to leave a coveted spot right in front of Sonsie on Newbury Street, you can charge $15 for someone to come meet you there at the exact time of your departure and take your space. But city officials claim the app will spawn all manner of road rage, potentially taking up valuable police resources. They contend that beyond that, it’s improper if not borderline illegal to “sell” city property — i.e., city parking spaces.
…
Of course, rational people know this app isn’t about selling a parking space. It’s about selling access to a parking space and information about when that space could potentially become available. The app doesn’t replace or take city revenue. Those who make a transaction via Haystack still have to feed the meter. This is essentially an entirely new commerce market that Haystack seeks to create, and it’s darn clever if you ask me.
In fact, it’s too clever. How do you think city councilors and the mayor’s office might have reacted had this idea been generated internally, let’s say, for the sake of argument, by its very own Office of New Urban Mechanics? Do you think city brass would have dismissed it with the same fervor? Of course not. Had the city generated this clever idea on its own, it would have been able to take a cut of the revenue from sales, launch a pilot program in one small area of the city and enjoy a nice PR boost for thinking outside the box. Methinks somewhere inside this conflict is one or two bruised egos.
It’s is a maxim of Democrat thinking that it is never too late to tax something. It is also a maxim that any perceived “injustice” can be overcome by cash. If the app can or could be shown to generate ‘revenue’ for the city, any previous concern bout ethics or civil unrest will vanish from the talking points of elected officials and bureaucrats faster than you can sell access to a parking space online. This works in any Democrat run city or state, banana Republics, and third world dictatorships.
The truth is that hardly anyone has noticed or used Haystack yet. But go ahead, city of Boston. Spend our tax dollars filing a lawsuit against a company because you think your own citizens aren’t civilized enough to handle it. See how far that gets you.
I think Boston will come around to the idea of allowing this with a *transaction fee, something other cities might embrace sooner having seen Boston mishandle it. Haystack could manage any transaction fee and just send the city a check. Some existing bean counter adds a line item on the budget and it’s a done deal. It then becomes a question of whether or not the Democrats can resist the urge to use any new revenue as an excuse to add office space and fully staffed departments to manage something that should be as simple as the city finding a bag of cash every quarter.
H/T Bill Boyd
