Editorial: Prison van prompts petty parking tickets
A little intergovernmental interaction is good for everyone.
It can, however, lead to some power struggles where those footprints overlap — especially in capitols. Washington, D.C., can bristle at its subordinate status enough to put its “taxation without representation” beef on license plates. In state and county seats, it can lead to a push and pull that can verge into the petty.
Like parking.
Westmoreland County’s courthouse had some sudden changes because of an urgent need to make structural repairs in the building’s underground garage. The emergency project costs $7 million and was necessary because engineers couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be a collapse.
That meant not only closing most of the parking garage but also spending more than $10,000 a month to contract for new parking around Greensburg for 180 of the 600 courthouse employees during the renovations.
But a few vehicles were left out of those agreements. The purpose of the courthouse is court, after all, meaning there is a frequent back-and-forth of inmates being transferred from the county prison to the courthouse for hearings and trials or to begin a sentence.
The vans that move inmates have to be located nearby for security purposes. That meant occupying metered spaces behind the courthouse. It also ended up meaning hundreds of dollars in parking tickets before a deal with the city was reached, shuffling some spots between Greensburg and the county to secure use of two metered spots where they were needed.
Sheriff James Albert admits he didn’t have time to make arrangements before they were needed, and that’s understandable. Greensburg police haven’t commented, but the tickets speak for themselves.
State law gives emergency vehicles the ability to do their jobs while working outside of the rules sometimes, like a police car speeding or a fire truck running a red light or an ambulance parking in a no-parking zone. While it doesn’t specifically spell out prisoner transport amid a courthouse construction project, this seems like a “letter of the law versus the spirit” situation.
It’s an instance in which Greensburg definitely was served by the construction project — no one needs the big building in the middle of town falling down — and the safe transfer of prisoners rather than the risk of walking them a couple of blocks to find where someone parked the van.
Let’s hope the rest of the project proceeds with few parking problems and a minimum of petty disputes.
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