Parking meters
Ok,
So I went into town this morning.
Went to pay my parking with my $2 coin.
Hello, sign on the meter saying this meter doesn’t accept coins any more and I need to pay either with a credit card or an app.
Well, I don’t have a credit card and I don’t have a phone.
So I try another meter.
It takes my $2 but doesn’t acknowledge that it’s received my $2.
The next meter doesn’t take my money either.
So I make a note of my parking space number and walk to the council offices and say.
“ I’d like to pay for my parking, this is my number and here’s my $2”
“ oh, we don’t take parking money here , you have to put it in the meter or blah blah blah….’
“ well, blah blah blah….so I’m here to pay for my parking, this coin is legal tender and you are required by law to accept my money”
Oooh, can’t cope with this, staff scurry off and get someone from the parking dept who comes out and is unable to hear the problem and tells me blah blah blah. She then suggests I put the coin in the meter out side the council offices as she knows it is accepting coins.
I tell her it is unacceptable to expect me to spend my time walking all over town trying to find a meter that’s going to accept my coin.
She suggests I just wait for the infringement notice and then write a letter of explanation.
I suggest that she accepts my coin and be done with it.
She refuses to accept my coin so I place it on the counter and walk out.
She grabs the coin and chases me out of the building trying to return coin.
I tell her I have paid for my parking and have a witness to that too as my partner is with me.
As I drive home I ponder on the waste of ratepayers money spent on employing someone to deal with the increase in people defending parking infringements.
So I suggest to all of you who are unhappy with council not accepting coins in parking meters to do as I have done…..and SPEAK OUT .
Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
🧩😏 Riddle me this, Neighbours…
I am an odd number. Take away a letter and I become even. What number am I?
Do you think you know the answer?
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