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When future Denver historians ponder the considerable achievements of the Peña Administration, they may not focus on the new airport, the new convention center, or the opening of the city administration to people not in the 59ers' Good-Ol'-Boy Back-Slapping & String-Pulling Club.
Instead, they might well note an innovative method of
promoting public civility. Just before Federico Peña (whose
name, no one has previously noted, translates into Official
English as approximately Fred Flintstone
) said he
would not seek re-election in 1991, the Denver Excise and
License Office announced that some new permits would go on
sale.
These permits cost $10 apiece, and are valid for only one day. If you buy one, then on that day you may crank up your car stereo so that it can be heard more than 25 feet away, and the resulting disturbance is perfectly legal.
On the other hand, if you've got an attitude problem, and insist on sharing it by blasting out a Mojo Nixon tape at the approximate decibel level of a jackhammer without a fresh $10 permit, then in Denver you face a fine and maybe jail. Your attitude will probably deteriorate even further.
The important thing here is not attitudes, but that the Peña Administration has launched an excellent way to deal with public nuisances. Instead of futilely trying to outlaw obnoxious things that people will do anyway, the city can sell permits that cost $10 a day. Thus is the activity discouraged. The dedicated can still pursue happiness in their peculiar ways by paying the fee, and thus is the municipal treasury enriched. Everyone benefits.
They shouldn't stop at car stereos, though, because there are many other nuisances wafting through the air.
For example, this time of year, you can't go into a store, shopping mall or office building without enduring an audio assault of piped-in Christmas carols performed by the Synthesizer Muzak Chorale and Orchestra. Most of these renditions are clearly audible more than 25 feet away from the speaker.
Every canned-sound outlet should thus require a $10 daily permit. A big upscale shopping experience could generate perhaps $4,000 a day in new city revenue, which comes to about $400,000 for the 100 days of the Christmas shopping season, which generally starts right after Labor Day. Either that, or Christmas carols would become what they ought to be, a matter of personal conviction, rather than a jarring inducement to more shopping.
A $10 daily permit system could easily be extended to handle other public nuisances. The city can ban smoking inside its buildings, but tobacco junkies then congregate outdoors nearby. Don't outlaw outdoor smoking -- just require a $10 daily Public Smoking Permit.
To be fair, there should also be a $10 Smoker Harassment
Permit, required of those harpies who can stand in a cloud
of bus exhaust and burnt jet fuel 50 feet upwind from a
smoker and shout things like You're ruining the air I
have to breathe.
Further, the Harassment Permit could be extended to handle things like anti-fur activists and abortion-clinic demonstrators. Denver's treasury would swell even as urban life became quite civil, and no longer would a great city exist only in the imagination. Licensing loud car stereos is just the start.
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