Pity poor Mr. X. He can’t get a resident parking sticker and he’s outraged.  “It’s unfair!  It’s unconstitutional!” he says.

Here’s his story.

Mr. X calls one afternoon. (The discerning reader has probably guessed that Mr. X is a pseudonym.) “I just bought a house in the Back Bay.” It’s important to Mr. X that I know he spent over a million dollars for the house. I pretend to be suitably impressed.

“And now,” he goes on, “I can’t get a parking sticker.”

I assure him he can.  Simply show up at City Hall, bringing proof that the car is registered in Boston, and he’ll get the sticker on the spot.

“But I’m not going to register in Boston.”

Why not?  It turns out that Mr. X has two other homes, one in Andover, the other in Rockport.  “If I registered in Boston, I’d lose my residential beach sticker in Rockport.”

I felt his pain.

It turns out as well that Mr. X has not one, but three cars.  How about registering just one in Boston?  “I’d have to pay thousands more in insurance.”

Thousands?  I pay just about a thousand even for my car.  Why would his be so much more?

“It’s a Jaguar.”

I felt his pain some more.

In any event, it turns out Mr. X doesn’t intend to live in Boston.  The Back Bay place is a pied de terre, a little place to crash after the theater when the ride to Andover is just too much.

I tell Mr. X that his chances of getting a sticker don’t look good. He argues that if he owns property, he should be entitled to a parking sticker. It’s a constitutional right. (For those of you who aren’t constitutional scholars, it’s in the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, parking stickers and effects … shall not be violated.”) Even better, he says, the number of stickers someone gets should relate to the value of the property he owns.  If someone in a $200,000 house in Dorchester has one sticker, Mr. X should get five.

The truth is, Boston doesn’t give out parking stickers based on property values.  The public policy behind this is to encourage people to be residents of the city.  There are many, myself included, who believe that the highest priority of local government should be to make Boston a residential city.  If you live here, we’ll try to do everything we can to make it easy to stay.  That’s why residents get parking stickers.  That’s why so much of the debate over local issues revolves around finding solutions that work for residents.

Mr. X disagrees.  He’s found a cause.  “Maybe I’ll move into Boston,” he says, “and run for City Council.”

I’m sure that makes incumbents tremble.