At least city officials aren't pretending that increased parking extortion is about anything other than increasing City revenue. Spokesman Tom Champion traces the new parking regulations directly back to recommendations from the Financial Advisory Committee appointed by Mayor Curtatone in January.

These changes extend past attempts to compensate for failed zoning and development policy by nickel and diming residents and business owners. But the damage that they do will go beyond nickels and dimes. They include doubling parking meter rates; extending meter hours to 8:00 PM and, in some business districts, 10:00; and increasing fees and fines.

Particularly irritating to me is forcing residential permit requirements onto 162 blocks that do not now have them. Mine is one, and with the exception of snow emergencies, there has never been a time when we did not have ample on-street parking. This burdensome and unnecessary change exists to jack up parking violation revenues.

While increased parking extortion means pain for residents, it can injure local businesses. Imagine attending a live performance at the Somerville Theater. Would you leave in the middle of it to go feed the meter? When you later found the $30 ticket on your car, would you be inclined to come back?

I talk about "increased" parking extortion because the new regulations extend a little-noticed strategy to compensate for city revenue lost to bad zoning and permitting decisions. Since Joe Curtatone took office, the number of parking control officers has increased by one-quarter, and revenue from parking fines has increased by one-half, to $7.4 million annually. Minus the $1.6 million budget for parking enforcement, this is almost a $6 million "profit."

Little noticed as well, is the fact that fines for many non-meter violations were already twice those of Boston and Cambridge. Noticed and widely discussed, however, are increasingly common stories from residents who believe that they were wrongly ticketed or that Traffic and Parking consciously uses tactics to promote violations.

The fine for parking in front of a handicap-accessible curb cut is $200, but a number of them are not in a crosswalk or not posted and are therefore invisible. There are no street-sweeping signs on certain blocks.

There is a prohibition against parking within twenty feet of a corner-a good idea for streets so narrow that parked cars could block the turning radius required by emergency vehicles. But it is applied to all street corners. And the city declines to either paint curbs or post signs that say "No parking here to the corner," while it has no problem posting signs with the mayor's name on anything that might be an amenity.

I won't get into the burden that the 48-hour parked-car prohibition imposes on residents who want to take a vacation. Or the requirement that friends and relatives who are visiting residents stand in line, hand over their vehicle registration, and pay for a "special visitors permit" if they want to stay longer than two days.

This short-term-gain-long-term-pain approach to increasing needed city revenues parallels the failed development policies for which it is attempting to compensate. Eight years ago in Somerville's other newspaper, I wrote that "the imbalance between commercial property taxes and increasing costs of residential services has brought us to the verge of a fiscal crisis." That crisis came a year later with sharp cuts in state aid, and it is here again.

Residential property is taxed at two-thirds the rate of commercial property, but produces twice the municipal costs. The city spends about $100,000 per acre of taxable land, but not a single property in the city produces that much per-acre tax revenue.

Historically, Somerville's policy, zoning, and often hiring decisions have been driven by favor-trading and political calculations more than by hard evidence and a commitment to our long-term future. So as the city's large business enterprises closed, favored developers were allowed to convert them to apartments and condos, worsening municipal finances.

Our best hope to solve these fiscal woes was developing Assembly Square, Somerville's and Boston's best remaining large-scale development site, as an office-based neighborhood with supporting retail. When in 1999, developers proposed building suburban-style big box stores instead, Alderman Curtatone opposed them.

Campaign finance records show that in 2003, the big-box developers mobilized campaign contributions sufficient to enable Curtatone to outspend his opponent 3-to-1, eke out a 50.8% majority, and become mayor. Three months after taking office, he pushed through legislation that gutted Assembly Square's zoning. The developers cashed out with $30 million in profit.

Federal Realty Investment Trust bought the property. They have infinitely more integrity than their predecessors and have demonstrated a commitment to wise development going forward. The Curtatone administration is now diligently pursuing commercial development in Union Square and the Inner Belt.

But those sites are much more problematic than was Assembly Square and have much less potential. And the economic cycle is not favoring us. So the big-box strip mall at Assembly Square produces $1.2 million in gross tax revenues, while parking extortion produces $7.4 million, with the promise of significant revenue growth.

This is an infuriating injustice, but it is also a distraction. It is another product of a debased political culture and the obsolete city charter that perpetuates it.