Stanley Yaffe thought he was committing a random act of kindness Wednesday when he put a quarter in a stranger’s expired parking meter.
Not so, a Denver “vehicle control agent” informed Yaffe. The “VCA” – as they say in the bureaucratic heaven of puffed-up titles and silly acronyms – told Yaffe that he had committed a crime:
“Interfering with the collection of city revenue.”
I searched the phrase in the Municipal Code.
No luck.
I called Public Works.
“We use the services of the Denver Police Department if there is any interference with the parking enforcement staff,” spokeswoman Patty Weiss said.
Yaffe says he interfered with no one.
“I had parked on 18th Street and put money in my meter. I went and picked up a cup of coffee. I paid cash and had some change.”
When he saw a “vehicle control agent,” Yaffe withdrew a quarter from his pocket and deposited it in an expired meter to keep a person he didn’t know from getting a parking ticket.
“A random act of kindness,” Yaffe called it in a conversation with me and in a tip he e-mailed to 9News.
He was stunned when the “vehicle control agent” explained, “I could have you arrested. You are interfering with the collection of city revenue. I could call the police right now.”
“You’re joking, right?” Yaffe said he responded.
“No,” Yaffe said the monitor replied.
Yaffe said he wouldn’t do it again and prepared to leave.
“What makes you think I’m letting you go?” Yaffe said the VCA replied.
Yaffe said he walked away after apologizing a second time and was not cited.
This is only Yaffe’s side of the story. But any city law that can twist trivial acts of private philanthropy into public crimes needs change as badly as expired parking meters.
City Attorney Cole Finegan could find no crime described as “interfering in the collection of city revenue” in the muni code. Finegan also couldn’t find a law that makes it illegal to feed a stranger’s parking meter.
What Finegan and the folks at Public Works did find was a code section that says if you’ve parked more than the allotted time at a meter, you can still get a parking ticket, even if you put in more money. But, Finegan emphasized, a parking ticket is all you can get.
Yaffe did his good Samaritan act before 9 a.m. in a zone where two-hour parking restrictions begin at 8 a.m. There was no way a two-hour limit could have already expired. At any rate, trying to split this hair in a city ordinance is surreal.
“Didn’t Hickenlooper have a campaign commercial feeding parking meters?” asked Yaffe, a 33-year-old resident of Denver’s Lower Downtown.
Not only did Denver’s mayor have a campaign commercial where he fed an expired meter, he had a commercial in which he fed an expired meter as an actor playing a VCA started to write a ticket. The evidence is still available at HickenlooperforMayor.com.
Perhaps a “vehicle control agent” should call the cops and have them beat it over to the mayor’s office to bag the big guy for contributing to the city’s budget problems.
Or maybe the statute of limitations, not the meter, has expired. John Hickenlooper won election in 2003, in part because he promised to fix whacky parking problems in LoDo.
Hizzoner, it should be noted, just offered to personally pay for parking tickets written on voters forced to overstay their meters while waiting to cast ballots during Denver’s recent election fiasco.
It’s a nice gesture, but it raises yet more questions about the zeal of the ticket writers.
Yaffe is no fan of Denver parking rules. He pays for his mistakes. He runs a hotel cleaning and supply business. His company van once got a parking ticket while loading supplies on a street marked for street sweeping.
“The street sweeper was nowhere to be seen,” he said.
Another time, he got a Denver boot for unpaid tickets while parked in front of Hotel Teatro, one of his swankiest customers.
Yaffe knows he was at fault in those cases. But he wonders about this one.
“I’ve done it before,” he said of feeding other people’s meters. “If I pull into a space and there’s, say, 56 minutes left on the meter, I’ll put the 50 cents I was going to use into another meter.
“It’s my money,” added Yaffe. “I should be able to do with it as I please.”
The concept is called pay it forward: When you benefit from random kindness, you do something nice for a stranger. The flow of good karma is supposed to build a better world.
Unless, of course, you’re talking about parking in Denver.
Then, a “vehicle control agent” threatens to call the cops.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
