Offices closed for furlough day inconvenience parking-ticket payers
Denver residents are turned away Friday at the Wellington Webb Building in downtown Denver, where they intended to pay parking tickets. The building was closed as part of the city's unpaid furlough day. INDenverTimes photo
Furlough day – the second of four consecutive days off for many Denver city workers and one big pain in the parking ticket.
The unpaid day off brought on by budget cuts didn’t mean parking meters were free Friday the way they will be Monday for Memorial Day. But it did mean the city office at which parking tickets are paid in person was closed, a huge inconvenience for several people who came to the Wellington Webb Building in downtown Denver on Friday and couldn’t get inside.
Marlien Weller took a bus to the light rail and got off at the 16th Street Mall. After a mall bus ride to Broadway, she walked to the Webb building to make good on parking tickets — with cash. She was just following instructions.
Outside the front doors, where other people were on phones sorting out their predicaments, Weller called the city’s pay-by-phone number. “I told her the Wellington Webb Building is closed,” said Weller, a native of South Africa. “She said, ‘Oh. Oh, yeah.’ It was like the penney dropped. I could have strangled the wench.”
The Department of Public Works sent out a news release Thursday announcing which offices and counters would be closed Friday. INDenverTImes published a short article about the closings the same day. Other news sites also distributed the news Thursday and Friday.
Nonetheless, some people didn’t get the message. Want to get the boot removed from your vehicle and you don’t have a credit card number to use? Sorry. You’ll have to wait until the parking magistrate and cashier’s counters reopen Tuesday.
