Last night, a tweet from @_The_Clearing brought this story from a year ago to my attention: West Linn HS senior sues city over parking restrictions.
Rory Bialostosky, who is now a college freshman, sued the Oregon city of West Linn for what he considered illegal parking restrictions near his high school. West Linn is an affluent suburb near Portland with an estimated 2017 median income of $100,188. West Linn Mayor Russ Axelrod correctly assessed the root cause of the problem: “There’s a lot of money in the community. Kids have access to cars. The first inclination is to jump into your car and drive to high school.”
“Bialostosky said he was wrongfully cited for illegally parking on Easy Street.” I couldn’t even make something like that up.
The situation, which Bialostosky called a “crisis” was so bad that “kids are getting up at 6 a.m., 6:30, just to get to school to park and the school starts at 8:30.”
The high school provided parking permits, for $40 a year, to 275 students. Additionally, two primo parking spots are auctioned annually for, reportedly, thousands of dollars each. Bialostosky’s senior class was estimated to be 461 students.
At least one member of council was sympathetic to Bialostosky’s complaints, Councilor Brenda Perry was surprised the school wasn’t required to build parking to accommodate the growing student population.
I wasn’t able to find whether the student’s case was settled in his favor (UPDATE: Almost certainly it was not), but Rory Bialostosky is in the news again this month. This time he’s suing West Linn City Council President Teri Cummings over public access to her hand-written meeting notes. That’s a cause I can get behind!