You can't fight CityHall

We know this recession is hurting everybody and the city of NY is not exempt from the pain. I haven't seen total tax receipts for 2009 yet but I have to imagine the total amount is way down with 10% unemployment, 20% underemployment and the closing of Scores East. It has also become very obvious that the city will find ways to get their money even if raising taxes during a recession is a non-starter.
I am not sure if you've noticed but NYC is on a full-out battle with it's residents to find new ways to generate income including, but not limited to, increases in water-rates and replacing many of the old coin operated dial-turning parking meters with new electronic meters which will ensure that people find safe-haven at "out of order" meters plus adds paid parking spots.

Well what I have seen lately are petty fines for minor offenses including a guy I know who got a ticket for occupying two seats on an empty subway car at 4 in the morning. There are tons of examples of this and frankly it's a disgusting example of the government putting a ridiculously large indirect burden on it's citizens.

Another example is what happened to our building this week, with their sights on some quick income we were fined for a recycling bag on the stoop on a non-recycling day. Now I'm not one to flaunt disobedience and I appreciate some of the 'quality of life' concepts but sometimes it goes overboard. I am sure they figure that most people aren't gonna put the energy into it and just pay it so if you find enough minor violations you can pay for an entire police force.

What is most frustrating though is that this bag didn't come from building it was dropped on my stoop by somebody else and now I am the clown who has to spend time and money to fight it. How do you prove that you didn't do something? I know in my heart it wasn't from our building because our maintenance guy who handles the trash doesn't work on Tuesday's and nobody in the building will stoop so low as to actually throw out their own garbage when there are receptacles in the hallway. I also know it didn't come from us because it was a blue bag (we have only clear ones) and it was a single bag while a good tree-hugging building like ours produces 10 recycling bags weekly..

What gets me is that NYC doesn't make it easy to contest it. You can contest it two ways: in person on a weekday which means I got to take a day off of work or via registered mail with a notarized formal written appeal with full photographic evidence. It's not that this is so much different that other tickets but the fact that you have to defend your innocence because some ahole left his garbage bag on your stoop just feels unjust.

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