Meter Cops Swap Tips On Avoiding Early Expiration

The pickup was double-parked on one of Portland’s residential streets.

Meter guy Kevin Moore politely warned the owner to move it, but on his next pass the heap was still hogging the road.

Time to yank out the trusty old citation book.

“I started writing the ticket and the guy just snapped,” says Moore. “I mean, he’s swearing at me and literally foaming at the mouth.”

Moore gunned his metermobile to flee, but the idiot jumped on, continuing to froth and fume against the windshield like a rabid mutt.

“So I’m driving down the street with this guy hanging off my scooter, spraying spit all over me and throwing punches through the open door,” he says.

Have you ever wondered how people like Moore put up with one of society’s most undesirable, underpaid and unappreciated jobs?

Meter readers from all over the West gathered in Spokane’s Ridpath Hotel this weekend to search for answers to that very question. The ninth annual Parking Enforcement Conference featured seminars on “Stress Management,” “Building Self-Esteem” and “Defusing Dangerous Situations.”

After listening to war stories from this battle-scarred bunch, I could suggest some more practical instruction:

How about, “Knife Fighting Made Easy,” “Dealing with Droolers” and “Congeniality and Its Rewards”?

“You give somebody a parking ticket and it’s such a personal thing to them,” says Cathy Gardanar. “They act like we broke into their homes and touched and smelled things they own.”

Gardanar spent the last 21 years slapping citations on the windshields of Seattle motorists. Working nights on danger-filled streets, she routinely crosses paths with drug addicts, crazies, corpses and the emotionally distraught.”

“I believe in that full moon stuff,” she says, launching into a tale of her first encounter with a suicide attempt.

Driving over the Aurora Street Bridge, Gardanar heard a radio call about someone teetering nearby on the edge.

Spotting the sobbing figure, Gardanar pulled over. Seattle parking enforcement is a wing of the police department, but employees aren’t trained to deal with suicides.

Undaunted, she walked over to the man, grabbed his hand and blurted out the first words she could think of: “Hi, are you having a bad day?” Gardanar eventually talked the troubled man down.

Back at the office, her boss scolded her, pointing out that grabbing a would-be leaper is not wise unless you’re game for a swan dive.

Despite the constant stress, she says her job is better than TV. “Dealing with the public is one of the most entertaining, diversified experiences.”

Diane Markovich, one of Gardanar’s former co-workers, organized the first Parking Enforcement Conference in 1988. She saw the informal get-togethers as a way for members of her maligned industry to blow off steam and maybe learn something.

This is the first time the convention has come to Spokane. Markovich left parking enforcement to sell compact, three-wheeled, Go-4 parking scooters favored by many cities.

Changing careers probably is a good thing, considering this woman once cited her own mother’s car for illegal parking and then ordered it towed to an impound lot.

“I thought it looked familiar,” says Markovich, who realized what she had done when her mom called to report her car stolen.

That’s the trouble with writing parking tickets for a living. The harder you work, the more toes you crush in your path.

“I nailed my neighbor parking in a handicapped zone once,” says Paul Henderson, who retired from Spokane’s parking enforcement three years ago.

“We both belong to the same VFW post and he hasn’t bought me a drink since.”

, DataTimes