The Mighty Sparrow complained bitterly “it’s a shame, it’s a shame” in his classic composition “Pay As You Earn (P.A.Y.E)” about the sudden imposition of income tax, lamenting, “but we have we self to blame, because we ask for new Government, now they’re taking every cent, cost of living is the same, it is really a burning shame,”
While such expenses today are certainly far above that of 1958 when the double entendre piece was penned, 
the clamour and complaints linger given that the customary, optimistic expectations which accompany the end of prolonged national corrupt administrations, then as now, can quickly alter. This year has been no different in Guyana with contrasting measures including a decline in the rate of VAT from 16 per cent to 14 per cent being countered by the tax application on electricity and water use over $10,000 and $1 500 per month respectively, and the slapping of a similar levy on private school fees.
The young Grenadian-born artiste nicknamed “Birdie” crooned, “plenty people want to cry, they miss the water, the well run dry” in his song directed at Trinidad’s leader, Dr. Eric Williams and his taxation policies. The rousing composition won the Road March title and became part of Slinger Francisco’s first “Calypso Carnival” album.
Weary Georgetown residents, who have long lived with parched pipes, giant potholes, putrid refuse piles, stagnant drains and an unkempt, insecure central cemetery now disagree that “they can’t do a thing about it.” They are in an unusual uproar over the latest imposition of high prices for parking in places, where previously they were none. All and sundry were free to pull up anytime, for far less than a sweet song, from along Avenue of the Republic to Water Street in the former Garden, turned Garbage and now Warden City.
Recent people protests by hundreds outside deficit-cursed City Hall about the controversial project have crossed race, party and street lines, and galvanized Guyanese in a popular boycott headed by the Movement Against Parking Meters. Following defiant days of deft dodging by determined drivers, bent on starving the machines, there emerged a most noticeable reduction in normal business, with the growing public and commercial outcry provoking embarrassing municipal and coalition conflicts, and leading to lawsuits and finally Presidential intervention.
Tango
Choosing to tango with an unknown foreign company that goes by the slick name of Smart City Solutions, the cash-strapped Mayor and City Council agreed to a questionable lop-sided deal covering the low-lying capital of a country, that lacks alternative transportation options and is among the region’s poorest and worst maintained. Original charges of $200 per hour where the hourly minimum wage is just above that, seemed excessive and ill-advised, amounting to real capital punishment perhaps better meted out to the strains of Lord Kitchener’s “One to Hang” or “Stanley Abbott’s” infamous chorus of “bawling for murder, screaming all over,” especially given the skewed revenue ratio of 80 to 20 per cent favouring the firm.
Now as the Government continues to tentatively play it by ear after summoning her Worship, Patricia Chase-Green from the Gothic Revival, fine but crumbling castle to face the blaring music, she was forced to suddenly change her tune and descend disheartened from the imperial 1889 blue and white wooden perch, even while wondering in majestic indignation about all the song and dance above the ensuing din of silent demonstrators
Recently, the media reported on the original agreement featuring a 49 years-initial grant to the concessionaire and an indemnity “terror clause” which holds the besieged city heavily liable for any losses incurred through its unilateral termination of the contract. These terms were since amended and the period cut to 20 years with an option for another two-decade renewal subject to the Council’s approval, and the indemnity sum reduced from 25% to 15%.
A woman who failed to hit the right notes after insisting on her Council calling the entire playlist for what was seen as easy money, Chase-Green backed by APNU appointees chose at this week’s Statutory Meeting to attack her Deputy, Sherod Duncan of the AFC, for consistently blowing the whistle in warning, even as she announced plans to possibly halve the despised rates. Accusing the former University of Guyana’s Student Society President of precipitating “civil unrest” by peddling misinformation to the objectors, she angrily cried: “Look at what you have caused. There is civil disobedience all because you are misinforming them. How do you feel, sir? How do you feel? Proud?”
“Duncan, who had been arguing that the matter of the amendments was a sensitive topic which Councillors should be given adequate time to address was never allowed to fully defend himself, as he was repeatedly heckled by Councillors and drowned out by a Mayor determined to have the last word,” Stabroek News (SN) said, adding that a representative snidely referred to those officials “who are snakes.”
He in turn reminded the Mayor she had been unwilling to compromise, noting it was only after agitation from some worried Council members that the proposed accord was subjected to scrutiny by the Finance Ministry and the Attorney General’s Chambers leading to several amendments, the paper reported. “When some of us started to ask questions about this contract, which initially cost $500 per hour of parking it led to a review that brought it down to $200, a sum which the President himself has said is burdensome to the Guyanese public,” Duncan argued.
Alarm
A key partner in the ruling Coalition, the Alliance For Change (AFC) called for the suspension of the scheme and an independent review. It soon expressed alarm over the disturbing reports condemning the “unwarranted attack” on its said spokesman and representative. “Therefore, an attack on Mr. Duncan is, invariably, an attack on the AFC and the party takes a dim view of this and calls on the Mayor to immediately withdraw her accusations, offer an unqualified apology, and take a more conciliatory approach towards resolving the issue of the widespread rejection of the … indecent and oppressive contract,” the group declared.
“It is unquestionably the initial and continued secrecy, lack of transparency surrounding the contract, the bad negotiating, lack of consultation with the people, and poor implementation which are among the main reasons for the widespread rejection of the paid metered parking initiative. It is the view of the party that it is in fact the Mayor along with the Town Clerk (Royston King) and those who were secretly involved in negotiating and signing off on this sordid contract who must take responsibility rather than seek to cast blame elsewhere,” the party continued.
As if that was not enough drama, SN revealed that Ifa Kamau Cush, one of the former principals behind the parking meters compact had been jailed for four months in New York in 2002 and placed on five years’ probation for grand larceny in the third degree. Cush prompted an outcry over incendiary comments widely shared on social media about opponents of the transaction. Pressed to provide a copy of the pact entered into with the Georgetown Council, Cush berated the unfortunate individual: “You’re not progressives. You are freeloaders. You lack the intestinal fortitude to control your own destiny. You all possess the mentality of slaves, indentured servants, incapable of generating wealth and building capacity.” Incensed, he charged “those of you with the mentality of slaves and indentured servants pay to park without a mumbling word in the United States and the United Kingdom. However in Guyana because you lack the responsibility of citizenship you prefer to live in squalor and backwardness. Fortunately you are in the minority for most Guyanese citizens are committed to modernising our country.”
Millions of parking meters indeed operate in the US today as part of a rigorously-enforced multi-billion dollar system. Ironically enough, the apparatus came about because angry merchants in Oklahoma grew fed up of poor business, but unlike Guyana’s case, this was from city workers parking their automobiles all day in front of stores and blocking potential customers.
According to History.com, in the 1920s, many of America’s urban areas lacked sufficient parking space for the growing number of vehicles, so by the time an intrepid reporter and colourful lawyer, Carl C. Magee came to start a newspaper, the Oklahoma News, the situation was desperate.
Appointed to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce traffic committee and tasked with lessening the escalating congestion downtown, Magee conceived an ingenious coin-operated contraption that could be used to allocate set amounts of time for parking in busy commercial thoroughfares. He deliberately sponsored a contest at the University of Oklahoma to help develop the idea. Designing and patenting his own model, Magee sought out State University Professors H. G. Thuesen and Gerald Hale to convert it into an operating instrument powered by a clock-type mainspring that required winding. An even earlier patent filed by entrepreneur, economist and writer, Roger W. Babson, in 1928, covered a device powered by the battery of the parking vehicle, requiring a connection from the car to the meter.
‘Black Maria’
Eventual winner, the “Black Maria” had nothing to do with the Police, instead being based on the gadget created by Magee and Hale who formed the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company, installing the world’s maiden “Park-O-Meter Number 1” on the corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue, in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. The invention required a mere nickel/five cents each hour and were placed at 20-foot intervals along the curb, on spaces painted on the pavement.
“The first working model went on public display in early May 1935, inspiring immediate debate over the pros and cons of coin-regulated parking. Indignant opponents of the meters considered paying for parking un-American, as it forced drivers to pay what amounted to a tax on their cars, depriving them of their money without due process of law,” the website says.
Businesses benefitted greatly from the meters but some outraged citizens complained of the oppressive tax on their right to own vehicles and intrusions on public space, initiating legal action. They failed to halt implementation however, and the added benefits of revenue generation quickly led other large metropolises directly managing the money-making mechanisms.
By the early 1940s, more than 140,000 parking meters across the U.S generated some $10 million annually. The money also came from fines issued to those who did not fork up. In a shrewd legal manoeuvre, American municipalities overcame the argument that they could not charge for using public zones like roads by claiming drivers were paying for the enforcement of parking, rather than the space itself. In 1965, Australia’s Surfer’s Paradise launched the unique gold-lame-bikini clad meter maids to “help beat the bad image” created by the parking appliances on the tourist strip. In 2016, the Gold Coast girls went from feeding meters to feeding hungry beachgoers, with a takeaway food delivery service app “Maid-to-Order.”
ID is humming the Beatles’ “Lovely Rita” and Sparrow’s other tune, “You can’t get away from the tax” while contemplating a Carnival jam session amidst the shiny skyscrapers of bustling Port-of-Spain, enjoying public parking as it is still free if scant and wondering whether the lofty landmark housing the Georgetown City Hall could someday be sold or leased.
