BPA: The Fatal Error (58)

(58^th in a series of posts on parking)

fatal error timeline: Fatal error

At the Airbnb hearing a couple weeks ago, the Judge found the City guilty of a “fatal error” on one count. Striking term. I looked it up.

A fatal error in legal proceeding is one of such substantial nature that it justifies a reversal in judgment or a new trial. A fatal error in law means “you lose.” For now anyway.

I’ll bet all of us have experienced a “fatal error” in front of our computers (like the dreaded blue screen!): “an error that causes a program to abort and may therefore return the user to the operating system. When this happens, data that the program was processing is lost.” A fatal error in computing means “you lose.”

In my estimation the Bethlehem Parking Authority committed a fatal error in what I will call the “feedback issue” that I described briefly in Exhibit 7: The Coup de Grace (47) and more extensively in the Fatal error timeline.

What, to me – and perhaps only in my estimation and not yours – what to me the BPA lost is my trust, my respect. (Do I hear people saying “Big Whoop”?)

Seriously.

I am mystified by the series of events. Somehow a molehill became a mountain to me. I don’t get it.

I asked BPA for a document. Was told informally it didn’t exist. Was told formally (RTK) it didn’t exist. Was as much as told personally in a public meeting that it didn’t exist (the interchange is on the above video). Find out that it does exist. And have received no explanation. Even when willing to accept blame.

What to make of this? At one end BPA behavior seems deliberately deceiving and unprofessional while at the other it just seems silly and foolish.

I can’t figure it out.

But what I can figure out is that the “feedback issue” is the coup de grace, the fatal error.

I have no trust in, no respect for the BPA.

And I have not arrived at that conclusion lightly, as several dozen posts behind this one show.

In my book, BPA, you lose.