sudden enforcement of over 48 hours parking rule?

[inq.livejournal.com]

went out of town for a week last week and when i got back, the car had 4 $20 tickets for being parked in one spot for over 48 hours. i've lived here a long time and never have i seen this enforced on my particular street (it's a little one-way street near davis in somerville). so, for $80 i guess i should have just driven to the airport and parked there, but i wondered if anyone else had been suprised by this arbitrary and capricious enforcement? (yes, that's the language from my letter of appeal.) also, at least one of these tickets was a mere 8 hours after the one previous, which doesn't seem to make much sense...

new parking officer, perhaps? i noticed a couple of other people on the street had a nice little ticket collection going as well...

Comments

[mrpet.livejournal.com]

I have gotten them in the past. It's a hard one for them to enforce since they first have to notice that you haven't moved your car. The fact that it has a ticket on it from before makes it more obvious, so the four in a row makes sense probability-wise.

I now leave my keys with a friend to move my car every two days for me. This also is a problem with the visitor passes since a single car can only use one two days out of any week (not necessarily two in a row.)

[tut21.livejournal.com]

I got one of these during the last snowstorm. To be fair, my car had been parked there for over a week. I was unaware of the parking rule.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I don't know anybody who's successfully appealed a parking ticket in Somerville, so let us know how that works out for you.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

The only time I was able to get a partking ticket lifted was when the city sent me a notice of a $100 ticket for parking in a spot 5 miles outside of where I was actually parked during a snow emergency. When I then tried to appeal a particularly bulls*** ticket (for parking in a clearly marked spot that apparently becomes Not a Spot at a certain time of day), they wouldn't let it go because they "had already overlooked one ticket." Never mind the fact that the ticket had no basis for being given.

Welcome to Somerville!

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

How did you convince them the car wasn't where they said it was?

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I had some friends get tickets for parking w/o a permit in front of my house right after a snow emergency - the snow emergency webpage specifically says (or said, anyway) that no parking rules will be enforced for a period after the emergency was lifted (12 or 24 hrs, can't recall). I sent in a letter with a printout of the web page specifying when the emergency was lifted, and they dropped the tickets.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

When I looked at the snow emergency rules, it said that parking regulation, including the 48-hour rule, will be *strictly* enforced after a snow emergency, not the opposite. (Not contradicting you. I'm sure they've changed it, probably more than once.)

[dreamgirly19.livejournal.com]

i have appealed and won all but one ticket and i have had about 8 total. so it is possible.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

What's your technique?

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I've appealed 4, but they were all from the same time period. I don't think my excuse would work for anyone else, but it did that once.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

i appealed a 48-hour violation successfully.

but here's the messed-up thing. my appeal wasn't successful because the ticket was given unfairly (even though it was-- i had only been in that spot for 33.5 hours) or because i brought it fairly decent proof that i had been moving my car (even though i did-- pay stubs that show i work 40 hours a week mon-fri in needham, and a movie ticket stub for a 7:30pm saturday movie in burlington). the guy told me that these things weren't proof because i "could have taken someone else's car" to work and the movie (which is kinda... why would i have a car if i had someone else to take me to work every day?) my appeal was only successful because i swallowed my pride when the guy said "well, it looks like to just made a mistake, so i'll let it slide this time" and instead of saying "no you jerk, i didn't do anything wrong" i said "ok, fine, i made a mistake. thanks".

so basically i successfully appealed a wrongly-given ticket by admitting to being guilty of something i didn't do. nice system we have here.

incidentally, when i asked the guy if there was any way i could prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future, he said no.

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

More likely a new neighbor, or you parked in someone's favorite spot which you haven't parked in before? (Or otherwise made an enemy recently?)

My understanding is that they ticket if someone complains. So I'm guessing that someone called and asked them to ticket you. I'd believe that before I'd believe that it was a new officer doing anything "arbitrary" or "capricious".

I think they also ticket if it's obvious that the car hasn't moved -- like, if there's a snow-storm and you haven't moved your car from under the snow, then they can't ignore it (to exactly avoid the "arbitrary" application of the law). But I don't think they go out of their way to figure out which cars haven't moved in two days -- they wait for a neighbor to complain, if it's really a problem.

[laklare.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. I once received 6 over 48 hour tickets in a row (back when they were $5 each) and I very much suspect it was because someone called it in. All other over 48 hour tickets I've received were near snow storms or because I had a ticket on there already and they knew I hadn't moved my car. However, my most recent over 48 was after our most recent storm. My car was completely clean of snow and there was no snow at all touching my car. In fact, I shoveled out the spot 1 foot around me completely. So somehow they knew I had been parked there for more than 48 hrs, but it wasn't because of snow cover. They must keep a list of license plates on the street each day in order or have very good memories.

[joylewis.livejournal.com]

Actually one of the parking meter people said that they mark the position of the tire stem to determine if a car has been moved or not. (I appealed a ticket in a similar situation--I was the only car on the block that had shoveled out at the end of a snowstorm a couple of years ago, and mine was the only car on the block with a ticket for not having moved.)

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

This is the most bullshit of laws and the city should be ashamed of having it on the books. It's just an excuse for them to soak residents for money.

We should start a petition drive to get this law either amended or completely struck off the books.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Thanks for the info. Glad someone's looking to do something about this.

[trijinx.livejournal.com]

Check out the last item on the page: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/01/funding_restored_for_police_fire_schools/?page=2

Thankfully, an alderman's looking into this.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's awesome!

[aquaflame16.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting this!
I'll write to Bill Roche to tell him I support his efforts.
Maybe some of the others here who are also annoyed by this could do that too?
and then if he can say he has residents' support he might have an easier time getting this to go somewhere?
cuz, really, he's right, this rule really doesn't make sense.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Or it's a law that is aimed at reminding people that public streets really aren't supposed to be parking lots. But obviously that idea is passe with people nowadays, with so many people living in the city wanting to own cars.

I think it's not such a great law, since it incourages people to drive their cars. But I do wish that there was a way to encourage people to not own cars in the first place, since part of the point of an urban area is that it's easy to get around without a car. Tax rebates perhaps, for the car free, maybe?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Ummm, well, where are we supposed to park our cars?

And while I dig your idea of utopia, we live in a city where the public transportation shuts down at a stupidly ridiculous early hour and is notoriously unreliable. And if we decide to park our car and actually use the T, we can then get punished with this ridiculous fine.

Fuck that. I live here, I pay rent, I pay my taxes- excise and registration- on my car, and there are times I have to travel for business.

It's absolutely fucking lame. One time when I was heading out on a trip I called the parking dept to see if there was any way I could register with them so I wouldn't have to worry about having my car ticketed or considered abandoned. There isn't.

It's such an easily-remedied situation, but the greedheads running this city refuse to do so. Kudos to Alderman Roche for trying to remedy this.

[xuth.livejournal.com]

I disagree. Maybe 48 hours is too short a time but a practical matter for the 48 hours is that the "emergency" parking restrictions (for construction or moving trucks etc) can be put up 48 hours in advance and there is reason to believe that people will have seen them. Other practical matters include recognizing abandoned cars. I do think the minimum times between reticketing are a bit absurd for most of the parking offenses but this one in particular.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I got a couple of these myself, and went to the traffic and parking office to complain/enquire. The first woman I talked to was useless, telling me that they can enforce the rules whenever they feel like it if they want to (when I said "I've lived here for two years and never been ticketed for a 48-hour violation before" she answered "Well, *I* would have ticketed you"). But when I talked to some fellow in charge (can't remember his name) he was actually really reasonable and helped me understand. It's correct that they normally do not enforce the 48-hour rule unless someone complains. However, they do enforce the 48-hour rule strictly right after a snowstorm, and this out-of-the-ordinary enforcement is specified in the Somerville Parking Regulations handbook/flyer (I looked at it, and it really is stated pretty clearly).

The reasoning is that if people don't quickly dig out and move their cars after a snowstorm, emergency vehicles can't get to houses when they need to. He told me about a recent occurrence where an ambulance couldn't get an injured person on a stretcher around the mounds of snow for 15 minutes. All in all, he was really nice about it and made me see that they genuinely are in a tough position when it comes to snowstorms, and not just being bastards about it. Not that you don't still have perfectly good reason to complain -- obviously they could handle it better, make the exception to the rule more widely known/understood, mail those parking regulations flyers to every address in summer when winter starts, etc. But I felt less angry about it. Especially when he very nicely took away the second ticket, so I only had to pay the first one. (And $20 is also less than tickets for virtually any other violation in Somerville.)

So yeah. I'm not trying to tell you not to be angry about it, by any means! It's always worth appealing (I actually have done it successfully). I'm just telling you what they told me. I hope that they at least take away some of your tickets, if not all.

[msjay.livejournal.com]

i'd like to see fox 25 (or other station) do a story on somerville ticketing habits. maybe it's already happened. but i think it would be entertaining to watch. although i find them bothering people obnoxious, i've had hundreds of dollars worth of parking tickets from somerville, so i'd probably laugh.