Gregory Todd Williams

I’m still frustrated over an issue I ran into last week with Troy’s parking situation. I generally park on a side street right next to my apartment. This works out really well because there’s much less traffic, usually more parking space, and no scheduled street cleaning (meaning I don’t have to wake up early on Friday morning to move my car).

Unfortunately, I only thought there was no street cleaning. It turns out that once a year in the Spring the side streets of Troy are cleaned to remove all the stuff that’s accumulated over the winter. If you know to expect it, it turns out that the schedule is posted about a week in advance on the city website and in the local newspaper (which I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen in person). If you don’t know to expect it, about two wooden signs per block are set up indicating the upcoming parking restriction. These signs are about a foot and a half high (you wouldn’t be able to see them if a car was parked in the adjacent parking spot), and only appeared roughly 24 hours in advance of the street cleaning.

So that was the set up last week when I left my car parked on the side street for an entire day unchecked, and came out the next morning to find my car missing. Perhaps the worst part, though, was that since the street cleaning was now complete the signs indicating the parking restrictions were now gone. There was no indication, then, that my car had been improperly parked, and I was left to call the police to find out if it had been towed, why it had been towed, and trying not to lose my temper as they explained the seemingly-abrupt scheduling of street cleaning. The response I got was that since this has been going on in Troy for the past thirty years, I should have known about it.

So I’m out $108 for the towing fee and $35 for the parking ticket, and left wondering why this seems like an OK situation to anyone else.