Continuing our story about taxi warfare and parking meters on August 12, we now turn to their fraught ending in North Dakota.
It starts with Howard Henry, a noted Westhope farmer, businessman, politician, and civil servant. While doing business in Minot, Henry walked across the street to talk to a friend before putting his nickel in the parking meter. A patrolman promptly ticketed him. That fateful “shot heard round North Dakota” led Henry to organize the Parking Meter Petitioning Committee. They drafted an initiated measure for Prohibiting Parking Meters in Political Subdivisions to be voted on in the 1948 primary election.
His main opponent was the League of North Dakota Municipalities. Conversely, they both agreed that Minot policemen could be more courteous in their ticketing. Nonetheless, the ball was already rolling, and both sides stuck to their chosen path.
The League, for its part, formed a Municipal Rights Committee to spearhead efforts. Its arguments were twofold: First, it touted parking meters as the best method to regulate parking and “promote a rapid turnover of parked cars.” Second, it argued that taking away parking meters would not only threaten municipal rights, but democracy itself.
Even under this threatening cloud, Henry and the anti-meter group won the primary by 2,500 votes. The League refused to back down, having a judge file an injunction so the meters could continue operating. The meter cities filed suit, hoping to declare the initiated measure unconstitutional. The League also organized a referendum campaign for the general election. Parking meters lost again.
In January 1949, the Supreme Court ruled that initiated measures could take away municipal powers, thus ending the first round of parking meters in the state.
But the story wasn’t over. In 1951, the state legislature legalized them again, returning to “the principle that municipalities should regulate their own parking problems.” Henry declared “rubbish,” initiating a referendum campaign that illegalized them again in the 1952 primaries, despite League opposition.
Later that year, Bismarck’s Chamber of Commerce planted Christmas trees in the former parking meter posts. In 1989, Minot donated “a quite old, but very little used parking meter” to Westhope in honor of Howard Henry.
The legislature has taken up parking meters multiple times since but the laws haven’t passed. North Dakota remains the only state without parking meters on public streets.
Dakota Datebook written by Cody Goehring
Sources:
- Minot Daily News and Daily Optic Reporter, 1/23/1948, p1, “Howard Henry Pays $12 For Parking Tickets; Denies Meters Basis For $220,000 Westhope Building Program”
- Minot Daily News and Daily Optic Reporter, 4/16/1955, p11, “Those Short Metal Posts”
- Grand Forks Herald, 6/28/1993, p4A, “That Reminds Me: North Dakota owes its lack of parking meters to Henry”
- “No. 2 – Prohibiting Parking Meters in Political Subdivisions,” 1948, SHSND 10100.0012.006
- Westhope Standard, 3/11/1948, p1, “Meter Petitions Being Circulated”
- Letter from Dr. J. A. Johnson (President of the League of ND Municipalities and Bottineau Mayor) to Myron Atkinson (Executive Secretary of the League of ND Municipalities), 3/3/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.007
- “City of Grafton Official Bulletin,” 6/22/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.006
- Divide County Journal, 6/24/1948, p4, “Parking Meters Mean Parking Places”
- “The Last Week of the Anti-Meter Campaign is Nearly Over...,” 6/25/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.006
- “Bulletin On the Progress of the Meter Campaign,” 6/12/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.006
- “Report of the Chairman Municipal Rights Committee to the Annual Meeting N. D. League of Municipalities,” 9/10/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.007
- Telegram from J. Adin Mann to Myron H. Atkinson, 7/29/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.007
- “Abstract of Votes on Initiated Measure Prohibiting Parking Meters,” 6/29/1948, SHSND 10100.0012.006
- City of Fargo, et al. versus P. O. Sathre, et al. Court Syllabus, 1/29/1949, SHSND 10100.0015.003
- Bismarck Tribune, 6-1-1951, p4, “The Parking Meters Come Back”
- “Petition for Referendum of Parking Meter Bill, House Bill 666,” 1952, SHSND 10100.0015.003
- “The Last Word on Parking Meters for Another 2 years” by J. Adin Mann, Parking Meter Committee Chairman, 1952, SHSND 10100.0015.004
- Wildrose Mixer, 12/18/1952, p4, “Meters Out, So Treelets Sprout”
- Minot Daily News, 8/2/1989, p6, “Meter tributes area man”
- Richland County Farmer Globe, 2/2/1959, p1, “Local Men At Hearing Held On Parking Meter Measure”
- Westhope Standard, 5/27/1976, p1, “Parking Meters Recalls Howard Henry”
- The Standard, 1/27/1999, p1, “Parking Meter Issue Surfaces again .... 50 years later”
- Prairie Public Broadcasting, 4/3/2017, “House says ‘no’ to parking meters” by Dave Thompson, https://news.prairiepublic.org/politics-government/2017-04-13/house-says-no-to-parking-meters
