Tampa Economy: Wasted Taxpayer Money...

....and I'm sure that the idiots who run the City of Tampa's courts and police departments will love this post.
First off, I should make it clear that I do not drink alcohol with the exception of very rare reason of celebration. I do have a problem with the city of Tampa and their "open container law' enforcement, or their over use of the law in trying to deal with homelessness and those who drink out in public.
Let me point out a few things here. Someone gets a ticket for having an open container of beer or wine, or whatever. The ticket gives the offender a court a date, at which time the offender will be given a fine of something like $135, give or take. I'm okay with things up to this point. What I'm not okay with is...
Said offender maybe has a warrant out on them because they have been arrested or ticketed for the same offense on previous occasions. Obviously, they haven't paid the past fines so now they face either 5 or 10 days in the Falkenburg Jail, depending on the mood of the presiding judge. So, that $135 fine that hasn't been paid is now going to cost the taxpayer $370.20 to keep the offender in jail for 5 days, or $740.40 for a 10 day visit. This is a waste of money which could be better spent on other things in Tampa and Hillsborough County.
I have also noticed that the majority of those getting tickets are in fact the homeless and/ or the day labor workers. I'm not for just letting these offenders off of the hook, but the city/county is never going to collect any of the fines from this group, and locking them up has not been a deterrent either.
$74.04 per day to lock one of these people up. That is cash which is basically going up in smoke. Money out the window! Gone, for nothing. That lost cash is not helping the local economy in the least. Come up with another idea Tampa. there are other ways to pad the officers arrest record.

State Of The Economy: Tampa

As you are all aware of by this time, the economic state for many lower income residents of Tampa is in a major degree of shambles. sure, the minimum wage is at a whopping $7.21 per hour, but with rises in the price of food, drugs ( legal ones ), and tobacco, that wage increase has been totally snuffed out of existance.
Want to have a really shitty time trying to live on minimum wage in this area? then might I suggest that you get sick for a week? That is what I did from the 4th up till now. I went and caught a bad case of pneumonia. Is there a good case? This illness has set me back almost to the starting point once again!
On Monday the 6th, I had just a bad headcold, which I could live with. On Monday, after going to a temp service and getting only a few hours of work per week, I finally got a decent job with 10 hour days, six days per week. Yippeee?! After spending Monday going from the high heat and humidity into a nice ice-cold truck on a regular basis, I got a little bit more sicker. Tuesday? Forget about it! I couldn't even move!the lungs were aching,the muscles were sore, and I'm not sure what the rest of me was doing. I'm a type 1 diabetic, so this shit did not help me much. So imagine. No income coming in, and plenty of income going back out. Needless to say, the job was taken over by someone else. Another one bites the dust!
There are many more people in even worse situations than I, and I do not see how they manage to pull living off on a regular basis. Perhaps this is why so many of the poor in the Tampa area drink and do drugs. I guess that the escape, even though temporary, is a means of management for the people here.
I'll have more on this after my illness is finished with me.