Disability Advocate: Hire Me and I'll Make San Francisco $600K a Year
Categories: Government
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| Bob Planthold thinks he could earn the city a fortune |
Planthold, a disability and pedestrian advocate -- full-time -- thinks that the motorcycles riddling city streets are a potential cash cow for our destitute city. And he feels he's the man to milk it.
According to the California Vehicle Code section 22500(f), no vehicles, including motorcycles and mopeds, may park "on any portion of a sidewalk." Here in the city, parking on the sidewalk is a $100 violation. Planthold, however, complains that you're more likely to find a $20 bill in the men's room than you are to get ticketed for parking a motorbike on the sidewalk.
But that could change. Planthold, a former city ethics commissioner who walks with braces and crutches after a childhood bout with polio, notes that California has a little-used law allowing cities to hire the disabled to enforce disabled parking access laws. Based upon his survey of the six square blocks around City Hall alone, he feels he could write "$600,000 worth of tickets a year."
Of course, Planthold's zeal for the job probably explains why he'll never get it. His phone call once resulted in a City Hall television reporter's car being towed -- "she's been pissed at me ever since" -- and he remains outspoken about city employees flaunting the disability access laws private citizens are often nailed for (as he noted in this SF Weekly cover story).
"Once every two weeks, I will e-mail in lists of city vehicles I see parked in MUNI bus zones," he fumes. "They think of it as their private parking!"
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