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

[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.