DPT officers get a bad rap. Everyone seems to despise them, yet they are a crucial element necessary to help all of us to effectively share our City streets.

Here are a few of the ways they make our lives better:

• Parking meter enforcement: You think it’s hard enough to find parking now? Without meter enforcement you would never be able find a place to park in the City’s high demand commercial corridors.
• Neighborhood permit enforcement: If you work out of town, where do you park your car after work? In your neighborhood. Without neighborhood permitting you would never find a space. Enforcement is key.
• Transit revenue: Have you ever taken a bus in the City? A great deal of revenue for our public transit system comes from DPT parking fines. This is good.
• Curbed wheels: It’s not just a joke to squeeze money from you, parked cars without curbed wheels can and do injure people.
• Sidewalk blocking: Nobody wants to live in a city where anyone can park their car anywhere they please. Blocking sidewalks is rude to most pedestrians and a major challenge for the mobility impaired.

Frankly, most complaints about DPT tickets include silly disclaimers, such as, “I just double parked for just a second… I didn’t feed the meter, but I was just going in for a coffee… I know there was street cleaning, but…” We receive significantly below market cost parking on our City streets. The least people can do is follow simple rules to share our limited parking resources.

So, dear reader, please shake the hand of the next DPT officer you see and say, “Thank you.”