Everyone hates getting parking tickets, but there may be a way to make them less painful. What if, instead of paying a fine, you got to donate school supplies?
That’s what the City of Las Vegas is proposing. For one month, parking violators can donate school supplies matching or exceeding the value of their parking fines instead of paying them.
“The way it works is parking services is part of our Economic and Urban Development Department, and they had the idea to do this as a way to give back to the community,” Las Vegas spokesman Jace Radke said in a phone interview.
The initiative began on June 19 and ends on July 19. So far, Nevada’s most populous city has received just seven donations, but violators could have up to 30 days after the July 19 deadline to pay, so more may be on the way.
Radke says the city has tried similar initiatives before, once swapping ticket fines for holiday gifts for homeless children. In July 2016, the Las Vegas City Council authorized occasional programs to swap parking fines for charitable donations.
This latest one was approved unanimously by the City Council. Supplies donated in lieu of parking fines will go to the Teachers Exchange, a nonprofit organization associated with the Public Education Foundation.
The initiative is clearly little-used so far, but it raises an interesting point about government transparency. What if cities were more open about where fines and fees went? What if residents knew that parking fees went to educational initiatives in their city? One hopes they wouldn’t have more parking infractions, but that they’d be less cantankerous about paying fines.
There’s nothing more frustrating, especially to a citizen who favors limited government, than to feel like you’re shelling out hard-earned money to the government for no reason. But if you knew that your parking fines were always going children’s education, at least you’d know your cooperation with the local government could lead to change that matters.
