That's outrageous.
Hey Boston, let's look at all of the ways that you already have your hand in the pocket of little old me from Leominster, who goes to the city maybe a half dozen times a year:
- I already pay a tax to get into the city on the Turnpike, the Ted Williams tunnel, the Sumner, or the Tobin Bridge.
- You get a cut of the outrageous parking fees I pay when I'm in town.
- My auto insurance is higher because many residents of you fair city can't walk around the block without test-driving the first car they see.
- My income taxes pay the bills of a lot more of your citizens than the bills of my neighbors.
- I'm paying for your crumbling tunnels, which I hardly ever use and you charge me for even when I do.
Your cab drivers, delivery trucks, and generally lazy drivers double and triple park at their leisure, but I'm going to get tagged if I bend a fender trying to avoid them? How about raising funds by ticketing or towing these scofflaws?
Your pedestrians clog up the streets by sauntering in out of traffic in an elaborate city-wide game of chicken, and you're going to charge me if I side-swipe a parked car in an effort to save some jaywalker's life?
Maybe the cost of services in your city would go down if you stopped paying cops to smoke crack and snort cocaine.
Boston, I know you've discussed the idea of taxing any visitor to the city, using a London-style system of cameras and transponders to either keep people out, or charge them for coming in. Maybe you should just take it one step further and set up a toll booth on every highway, avenue, street, and alley coming into the city. Take each of us for a couple of bucks every time we enter.
In fact, you could set it up like a customs checkpoint, and charge a tax for people leaving with items they bought in town. Or better yet, maybe you could secede from the union and charge each of us $100 for a visitor's visa or a work permit.
Anything for a buck.
Tags: Massachusetts Boston Big Dig Taxes Fees Accident Tolls Pothole Jaywalking Parking Police
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