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article, newspaper

Catalog Number
2021.12.5
Description
Newspaper article from the Grand Rapids Press titled "Meters' time is up'".

The article discusses the removal of parking meters from downtown Holland in 1988 with Mary Medendorp.
History
Mary Medendorp, a Holland, MI resident, worked for the Holland Police Department for 15 years. The first 10 were spent working as a parking enforcement officer. When Holland removed the parking meters from downtown, Mary became a 911 emergency dispatcher. Mary points out that she was a law enforcement officer, not a police officer. The difference being that she could not carry a gun or make arrests.

As a parking enforcement officer Mary wrote tickets, fixed busted meters and placed the iron boot on cars with unpaid parking tickets. In her nine years in parking enforcement, Mary figures she wrote more than 150,000 parking tickets. Her one day record was 250 parking tickets. In response, over the 9 year period Mary received well over 3,000 letters from irate parking offenders. Mary kept these letters because they made her laugh.

In her defense Mary says "If I didn't feel a person deserved a ticket, I wouldn't have given it".
Gift of
Medendorp, Mary