Thursday, September 07, 2006

Commercial Vehicle Ban in Prince William County

According to the Potomac News:

Commercial vehicles are banned from parking on residential streets in Prince William County, by a unanimous vote of the Board of County Supervisors on Tuesday.

Staff recommended that the board defer the vote until the new budget cycle, but Supervisors John D. Jenkins, D-Neabsco, and Hilda M. Barg, D-Woodbridge, disagreed.
...
One reason staff recommended the deferment was a lack of police officers to enforce the new ordinance. Another was the estimated $1.3 million it would cost to enforce over five years.


Not much surprise, the desire to rid our streets of these vehicles was overwhelming. But there is something very odd about the Potomac News article -- if you read it, you will think there are only two supervisors on the board, and they are both democrats.

In the entire article, the only two supervisors mentioned are Jenkins and Barg. Even though every supervisor voted for the bill, and even though a majority of the republicans was required to "disagree" with the staff recommendation, a reader would think that only the democrats supported this bill, and the republicans had do be forced to do anything at all.

It is impossible to believe that NO republican on the committee would comment for the paper, so it seems more likely that the reporter chose to only include the two democrats when discussing this measure, which as I said will be widely popular with the citizens.

You don't think Corey Stewart would have liked a quote on this?

I almost wrote a column about this for this week, until it became clear there was going to be a vote before I got published. My complaint was that the staff said we couldn't pass the bill because it would cost too much to enforce.

My opinion was that if the ban was the right thing to do, we shouldn't avoid it just because we might not be able to stop the lawbreakers for a while. After all, most people, especially people with businesses who can't afford to be fined and have their vehicles impounded, would follow the law voluntarily, simply because it was the law.

Anyway, I know that this was a continuing problem when I served on my local HOA. People are tired of having to live with these huge trucks and food delivery vans in their neighborhood streets.

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