Letter to the editor

After seeing a parking ranger take a picture of a parked car, driver inside, while he is driving through an intersection, I received a $147 parking ticket for my car being parked back-to-front in a quiet, dead end street in North Bondi.

No matter what I do to respect my community, council want to brand me a bad citizen. I am shocked, perpetually disgusted, and severely depressed.

In the week since I contacted Sally Betts of these disasters, no one has called me back. Her PA just gave the email to council’s parking division General, the person who enforces rangers to behave like Pavlov’s dog. No one has investigated the illegal act of the first ranger. This is from a council whose call-in message qualifies its interest in customer service.

Where do these rangers come from to behave this way? Are they paid by commission? Is council thinking of the alienation this builds against
themselves and within the community? Council says it has no money for the next 11 years to fund all community projects but what are those projects it wants money for? What percentage involves hiring still more rangers to fine more people after councillor pay rises? How do people who treat their community this way get into power in the first place?

Instead of really building, involving, and leveraging community participation, they value fine-slapping for useless reasons, and affect our sense of community in the process. Who else do they stab in the back for their greater good?

It’s the type of people and society their action breeds that worries me. Law is to assist humanity, not a process of control to one’s will just because you can. How does my car parked the other way around in a dead end endanger community, while a ranger taking a picture of a parked car while driving isn’t?

Frederick Malouf

North Bondi