I fought the law

This afternoon I went outside to scrape the snow off of my car and attempt to move it. When I got out there I was irritated to find that I had gotten ticketed. Milwaukee has regulations on certain streets, including mine, that you can only park on one side of the street during heavy snow. Unfortunately when I got home last night I could only find a parking spot on the wrong side of the street. I parked there and hoped for the best.

As I cleared off my car I found a second ticket for the same thing - snow parking violation. I looked at the time stamps and found that one was given at 12:59 AM Friday, and the second was given at 12:53 PM. They had gone down my street twice in the same day to give out tickets.

I was furious. They say you can only park on the north side of the street. Well, half of the north side of my street is torn up because the electric company is doing something that involves digging a large trench and parking all of their equipment along our street. Further up there's another stretch of no parking because of construction being done on a new building, another small area that's off-limits because there's a fire hydrant, and after an oasis of parking there's another no parking zone because you apparently can't ever park in front of a housing project's* yard.

Now, when I get a parking ticket I usually just grumble and pay it off. But I felt like the city shouldn't penalize me for parking in the wrong spot when they've taken most of the available parking on my block. I also feel like I shouldn't have to walk my six-months-pregnant-self several blocks in the snow just so I can park on the approved part of the street, especially since I pay to park on the street. You need a permit to park overnight, and Mike and I dutifully bought our 2008 permits this January. Not to mention that these permits are only for parking near your house or apartment...if you park too far away, you get ticketed for that as well. At the very least they should knock off one of the tickets.

So I called the customer hotline for tickets. After assuring the computer system several times that no, I was not at all interested in paying my citations, I got to talk to a real person.

"When was each ticket given?" she asked when I said I'd gotten ticketed twice for the same violation.

"One was at 12:59 AM, and one was at 12:53 PM," I replied.

"Well, because they're twelve hours apart, there's nothing I can do," she responded.

"Technically they're eleven hours and fifty-six minutes apart," I replied helpfully. "That's not the same as twelve." Mike was once ticketed for not parking four feet away from a driveway when his bumper was damn close to that, so I knew these parking people were exact. Maybe they'd appreciate the exactness of my argument.

"Close enough," she replied. Apparently they only appreciate following the letter of the law when it means they'll get $30 for a citation.

I explained about the construction situation and said that I didn't feel I should be penalized by the city when the city itself was taking up most of the available parking on my block.

"Well, if you want to fight it then you can make an appointment to have a hearing," she responded.

"Yeah, no thanks, you only do those at certain times of the day, and I work," I replied. I had $60 worth of tickets to pay, but taking a day off of work would mean losing more money than that in lost wages. No thanks.

"We have a variety of appointments every weekday, ma'am," she said, sounding offended that I didn't like their schedule, "going from 8 AM to 2 PM."

"Well, I don't work in the city, so I can't really come running back here to talk about parking tickets," I said bitterly.

"We're currently arranging hearings for mid to late March," she said, thinking that I could arrange a day off.

Well, I can't take a day off, but I did perk up because late March is when I have my spring break. She told me to call back on Monday to make an appointment.

I think I will. This weekend I'm also going to take photos of all the construction equipment on our block to prove that the parking situation was severely limited by the city's own actions. I think I'll get one of the tickets knocked off, at least.

Jerks.





* I know "housing project" makes you think of city slums, but this is different. It's some kind of high-rise building for people who are elderly or have low incomes, but it seems nicely constructed and kept up. These things are scattered all across our neighborhood.