Talk about a real tax protest!

By Steve Collier, Colorado Springs

Not sure if you all have been following the news out of Chicago, but take a look at this report from the Web site theexpiredmeter.com:

As teams of LAZ Parking’s employees have slowly, but quite surely, canvas the city, changing the parking meters to their new, much higher rates, another movement seems to be blossoming as a reaction to these changes.
At first, it seemed just random or coincidence when a broken meter was spotted. There’s no big surprise in finding a broken meter in Chicago–they’re everywhere.
But the number of broken meters seemed to be increasing and e-mails and comments began pouring into this website with tips, along with bits and pieces of information. Websites with very strident points of view have popped up over the past few weeks advocating everything from as simple as a boycott, to using pennies or nickels to fill up the meters to capacity and render them inoperable–at least temporarily.
An entire block of parking meters, numbering nearly 20, were spotted along west Irving Park in the Albany Park neighborhood, that had both the front and back of their heads spray painted black. Once spray painted, these meters are unreadable by Parking  Enforcement Aides and therefore, vehicles can’t be ticketed as it’s impossible to see if the meters were fed or not.
LAZ Parking’s new decals have been removed in a concerted effort along Lincoln Ave. and other streets in the Lakeview neighborhood, leaving long stretches of meters without any instructions on how and when to feed the meters. This leaves the meter without the proper information required by law to be an operational parking meter. A motorist could easily contest any expired meter ticket on these meters because it doesn’t exhibit the proper information.
One tipster named Brian says, “In some cases, these decals just peel right off the front of the meter with little or no effort. When these stickers were originally applied, the weather was very cold and it seems the adhesive didn’t adhere correctly. These stickers just come right off. They also appear to be too big to fit into the recessed area they are being placed in. Yet another case of someone in charge not knowing what they are doing.”