Google Group for Somerville Parking Woes

[davidfic.livejournal.com]

Hi all,

I recently became acquainted with the wonderful world of the Somerville Parking and Traffic office.
I have lived in Somerville for about 6 or 7 years and have received the occasional ticket, but recently we had to challenge one of these tickets and that is when I realized what a crazy system they run.

The Ticket Officers seem to wield unchallenged power such that any ticket they write is just about impossible to challenge.

I have created a Google group in the hopes that we can all get together and share our stories, comment on other stories and HOPEFULLY work towards showing the city of Somerville that its citizens won't stand for a department that almost seems above the law.

The URL is:

http://groups.google.com/group/somerville-parking-problems

I am excited to see if we can get a ground swell of support and show the mayor just how many people view this department with disdain.

Regards,

David
 

Comments

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I too, like the above poster, have successfully challenged parking tickets here in Somerville. I think you'll find plenty of stories if you check the appropriate tags on this group.

[davidfic.livejournal.com]

I have been looking through the posts in the parking tagged section and I have seen a lot of posts on both sides. There seems to be people that have had good luck and others that have had nightmare stories.

I am very jealous that you guys seemed to have had good luck appealing. I thought we were doing everything right. We wrote letters, called, but in the end we are forced to go to court to try and fight this and they want $275 to do that.

I would love to hear what your ticket was and how you appealed it. Was it recent? I have spoken to a number of people recently that have all had similar issues.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I appealed several tickets when I first moved here 6 years ago, because I'd had to go on a business trip for a week before I'd been able to get my sticker, and then my car racked up a couple of street sweeping tickets as well while I was gone. All I had to do was explain that I was a new resident, and ask if there was anything I could do, and they were forgiven. I was amazingly grateful at the time. I've also dealt with that office a lot for party passes and they've been amazingly kind and effective.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, though--do you think maybe a productive way to try to solve it would be to go through your alderman?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

I had the opposite happen. I got ticketed for the 48 hour rule and even though I showed them my plane ticket and hotel receipts, they told me that the law was the law and I had to pay the fine.

[simianpower.livejournal.com]

What 48 hour rule?

[davidfic.livejournal.com]

you can't leave your car in the same spot on the street for more then 48 hours. While I understand the spirit of the law, it seems like they should offer some sort of leeway as all sorts of situations come up where a person may not be able to move their car in that time frame.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

What do you see the spirit of the law being? Personally, the 48 hour rule upsets me more than anything else about parking in this town. For visitors, sure, but I should be able to park in front of my own damn house without having to move the car down two parking spaces just to avoid a ticket every two days.

[whodameg.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, do you suddenly own the street?

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

??

I don't see a connection between feeling entitled to park in front of my house and claiming ownership of anything. And what does that have to do with the city fining me if I don't need to move my car for three days? Am I claiming ownership of the street any less when I move my car forward one spot to avoid the fine?

[jimmyfergus.livejournal.com]

+1

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

You cannot park in a space for more that 48 consecutive hours. If so, you can get a ticket. They really enforce it after snowstorms. If you don't brush off and shovel out your car within 2 days, there's a really good chance you'll get ticketed. But you can get ticketed any time of the year. I got mine I think in March- before streetsweeping season but at a time when there were no storms.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot of inconsistency and arbitrary judgement-calling in the system. For example, I usually forget to update my parking permit. One year I went in, got the new permit, told them about the tickets and they took care of them right there. At other times I have been told straight-out that they have no ability to do anything about tickets and that I have to fight them.

Regarding fighting tickets, a lot of people say they had good luck doing it, but isn't the system it's self kind of ridiculous? The way I understand it, even if I know I want to fight a ticket, I can't do anything about it until it's late and /then/ they send me late notice (at which point iirc I have to fight it or face a late fee), which includes a thing I can send back to inform them that I want to fight it, at which time they give me an appointment to come in (during work hours) to talk to a judge. Is there more to it than that? If not, the appeals system seems cumbersome at best and broken at worst. I can't think of why most of these issues couldn't be resolved just as easily via web/email.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Well, the system itself is pretty arbitrary. To be fair, I've appealed and won a ticket as well. Luck of the draw, I guess.

other ideas

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

Hi David,

I don't own a car, so I don't deal with parking issues, although my older brother once got a ticket within a few minutes after parking on the street. Oddly, whereas residential parking regulations seem to be enforced strictly, I've heard that handicap parking around the city is loosely enforced as is clearance of the bus lanes.

Other ideas to try:

• Contact your ward alderman (http://www.somervillema.gov/Department.cfm?orgunit=ALDERMEN) and Aldermen-At-Large.


• Post to Resistat groups (http://www.somervillema.gov/section.cfm?org=somstat&page=1067)


• Post your story to SomervilleVoices.org (http://www.SomervilleVoices.org)

[davidfic.livejournal.com]

Thanks everyone for the responses so far.
After not getting a satisfactory response from the Traffic and Parking Department I sent an email to the mayors office and also CC'ed my alderman( Bob Trane ) as well as Carl Sciortino.

I got responses from the mayors office and from Carl. The mayors office basically said that once the ticket is entered into the computer system we don't have much in the way of options to dispute it.

I am still waiting on a response from Bob Trane.

I have been reading the archives here as well as talking to other residents and it seems there is a god mixture or people that have had luck getting their tickets overturned as well as those that have had to fight it tooth and nail.

My main reason for creating the group was that I know there are plenty of people that have had negative experiences when dealing with the parking system and I wanted to give us a place to organize.

I'll update the post with more info as I get it. Hopefully someone will see the flaw in a system that can't be questioned :)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

with the computerized scanner ticket things they use, the tickets are pretty much in the system instantly, for all intents and purposes... so that's a crock of an excuse.

if someone pays the $275, i wonder if there's a crafty way to win those fees back. ie: sue not just for waving the ticket, but damages :> esp if they towed your car under false pretense? tricky. good luck.

#

[xuth.livejournal.com]

Well, I kinda figured that this LJ forum was the canonical place to discuss and complain about somerville parking enforcement. If you are very serious about trying to fix things you have several routes. I think the most fruitful in the longer term would be get a local ordinance passed to make the appeals process more friendly and responsive. This can definitely be done through the aldermen but you may also be able to do something through a ballot initiative (and I have no idea how this works).

[davidfic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advise about talking with my alderman about getting an ordinance passed. I will look into.

The reason I created the Google group was that I wanted a place that was a clearing house of all things related to Somerville Parking. While this site is a great resource for all of us living in the Davis Square area, there are many other topics covered. My goal was to have the group gather as many stories in one place as possible. That way the people that feel the strongest about the ticketing problems have a separate place to voice their opinions. Hopefully the site can generate enough discussion among us that we can do things like get the ordinance passed, or put something on a ballet.

My main goal is just to show the city that some of their ticketing laws aren't logical and that there is abuse in the system. How ever that happens, whether it be via this site or on the group site I really don't care. I am just so upset after getting my first glimpse into the inner workings of the city I felt I had to do something :)

There seems to be a lot of people out there that have similar issues with the traffic department. They can't ignore us all :)

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

I agree with xuth that getting the Board of Aldermen to change the parking regulations is probably the most effective solution.

I'm interested to hear whether/how Alderman Trane responds. How did Rep. Sciortino respond?

Unfortunately, Somerville does not have a ballot initiative process. You can petition the BOA to vote on something, but that's much less powerful, since they aren't likely to approve it if they weren't willing to take up the measure on their own in the first place. You can also petition the BOA to hold a public hearing on something, and that could be very effective in drawing attention to an issue.

I think creating the parking-focused Google group is a smart idea. Davis Square LJ does cover many city-wide topics, but mainly from the perspective of people in this area, so it's not very representative of the entire city. The lack of a city-wide forum was the reason why I helped launch the Somerville Voices (http://www.SomervilleVoices.org) blog and why the SomervilleMass (http://community.livejournal.com/somervillemass/) LJ group was created (which I played no part in).

Oh, and parking tickets aren't the only type of citations causing headaches around the city. As reported on in From A Concerned Property Owner (http://www.somervillevoices.org/2008/12/02/politics/from-a-concerned-property-owner/) the city is apparently targeting some property owners with various types of citations that are also next to impossible to dispute. Clearly, this problem goes beyond just the Traffic and Parking department.

[panda681.livejournal.com]

At least when you only get a ticket, there is an appeals process. There seems to be no such thing for when you get towed by the police. A neighbor was moving and, even though you get two moving signs to mark off the spot(s) you want in between the signs, they posted one sign. I didn't park in front of the sign, but in the spot next to the sign so they had me towed (how nice). I called 311 who said that I should call the police so I can get the claim ticket. When I called the police and went to the station they said there is no way to argue/appeal being towed. So I was out $110 for the towing plus a $25 (I think) ticket. I went to contest the ticket and they said there was no way to eliminate the ticket because they can't say the police were wrong, even though they were. But the lady felt bad for me and deleted another outstanding ticket I had for parking too close the intersection. I hadn't paid that one because the ticket I got had the wrong license plate number and was for the wrong street. Fascinating how it still was entered in to the system under my car.

Sorry if this was a bit rambling but my point is that if you are towed by the police for a parking violation there is ABSOLUTELY no way to contest it, unlike a regular parking ticket where you don't get towed.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

Somerville has recently made parking tickets their best source of income. They used to be pretty good about forgiving tickets. Now they rarely forgive them. My daughter (a new driver) received 2 tickets she didn't deserve. One for parking in a no parking zone on Mystic Ave (a place where she had never parked her car - and she knows because it was only a few weeks after registering the car!), and one for parking in front of our house too close to the fire hydrant. She wrote a very nice letter telling them she had a flat tire and had no place else to park while having AAA come out to fix it, and moved it immediately after it was fixed (the ticket must have been written literally while she went inside for her keys to move it!!). She even told them that she's a college student who can't really afford a ticket she didn't expect or deserve.........but no go. They simply no longer care at Traffic and Parking. It's most certainly a directive from above. It's also why they are now ticketing for such absurd things as being 3/4 of an inch too far from the curb!