TICKETED AND NOT TAKING IT
Some citizens say system displays serious flaws
Cheryl Markel got a City of Regina parking ticket last October. She paid it five days later. But that wasn’t the end of it.
The $25 ticket for parking in front of her son’s high school loomed over her head for more than year.
“Totally ridiculous,” said Markel. “I got a ticket; I paid the ticket; I went down there to show them.… It went through all these levels and nobody looked back to the original beginning.”
Unlike the many other Reginans this year who have been ordered to pay parking tickets they claim to have paid years ago, Markel had a receipt. She also kept every bit of paperwork to prove her case.
Markel was one of 210 people who chose to fight their parking tickets in court in 2016.
Dawn Ridgway has done the same for a parking ticket she received in June near Regina General Hospital.
Between June 20, 2016, and June 20, 2017, 1,942 parking tickets were issued in the General Hospital area, according to data obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request Ridgway made of the city.
Ridgway and her daughter, Courtney Ridgway, accounted for two of those tickets.
They were frequent visitors, as Dawn’s mother was sick in the hospital.
On June 5, Dawn Ridgway got a $25 parking ticket for breaking a rule set out in the city traffic bylaw.
Stopping or parking is prohibited “within 10 metres of a street intersection … unless permitted by the presence of a parking meter or sign.”
Her ticket states she was 5.2 metres from the intersection.
Where she was parked, there was only a stop sign. Along nearby streets, within five metres of the intersection, there were signs to indicate “no stopping beyond this point,” as well as two-hour parking signs.
Ridgway and John Perdicaris, who was also ticketed at this location on July 6, take issue with existing signage in the area.
“They indicate (in the bylaw) that you’re supposed to be 10 metres away from the corner,” said Perdicaris, “and on the other side they have erected signs that they themselves allow people to park, and the distance, it’s far less than 10 metres.”
Faisal Kalim, manager of parking services for the city, explained that the distance actually appears less than 10 metres, as “it’s measured basically from the parallel of the other street.”
The rule is in place to ensure that sightlines are clear.
“If you can fit one-and-a-half cars in that space, that is the space where you can’t park,” he added.
That somewhat explains why a grey truck was ticketed on June 14.
Ridgway observed a parking enforcement officer measuring the truck’s distance from the intersection on 14th Avenue prior to issuing a ticket. However, the truck was parked behind a clearly marked two-hour parking sign.
“Basically, the guy (parking officer) told me it was a cash cow at that corner,” said Ridgway. “That’s a ticket they can write as soon as somebody pulls in there; it has nothing to do with time.
“They just prey on (people),” she added. “Honestly, most people that are going up there are going up there to see sick family or friends, right? And parking is at a prime there.”
“They’re counting on the fact that people are busy, they can’t take a day off and go and fight this thing, and (the city is) making money out of the situation, and they don’t seem to give a hoot,” said Perdicaris, who was visiting his son in hospital when he received his ticket.
Kalim said parking patrol is heightened in this high-traffic area, per the city’s mandate to provide a “safe and efficient flow of traffic.”
Perdicaris’s ticket states he was parked 8.51 metres from the intersection.
“My argument here is, is it fair for the city to expect every individual to carry a measuring tape and measure how far away he is from the corner?” he said.
Further, he said, signage at this location would have saved him a ticket.
“Even the papers that they gave me, they state that they’re supposed to have a sign erected there and there is no sign,” he said.
Kalim said traffic workers can make mistakes when it comes to sign installation, and residents can make service requests to correct them.
“We don’t want to encourage people to break the bylaw and we want people to fairly know where they can park,” he said.
The city issued a work order on June 27 to fix signage in the area; three of the five sign changes on the work order have not been completed.
A no-stopping sign 10 metres south of the intersection, with an arrow pointing north, has not yet been installed on the 2200 block of Halifax Street, nor has the same sign for the 2100 block of Halifax Street.
On the southwest corner of Halifax and 14th, the existing signs were to be moved 10 metres west of the intersection; that hasn’t happened either.
“I don’t think the left hand knows what the right hand’s doing at the city,” said Ridgway.
Markel agreed. Fifteen days after paying her parking ticket, which was handwritten by a Regina Police Service officer, the city sent her a notice of pending summons to court.
Five days after that, on Nov. 14, she returned to city hall to correct the problem. She ended up requesting a parking ticket review.
A month later, on Dec. 16, she received a letter from the city parking services department.
It stated her ticket was justified and showed $10 outstanding — turns out, because the police officer wrote the wrong fine amount ($25 instead of $35).
But the text of the letter contains two glaring errors.
“Please note, the fine amount is $700 with an early payment amount of $35,” the letter stated.
It continued, “If you wish to pay the ticket, you may pay the reduced amount shown above for the ticket if payment is received by Jan. 6, 2016” — 11 months before.
On Jan. 12, Markel received her summons to court. She appeared on Feb. 7 and pleaded guilty so she could address the judge and show her records.
“(The judge asks), ‘Do you have anything to say? I said, ‘Yes, I paid it five days later,’ ” Markel remembered.
“(The prosecutor) shakes her head, and the judge looks at me and … says, ‘I’m so sorry for this inconvenience.’ ”
Kalim said there were “a lot of errors” in handling Markel’s ticket.
“We have since changed our process, that if the officer puts the wrong fine amount, then we automatically cancel the ticket upon entry,” said Kalim.
“A situation like this led to significant process changes in our branch.”
He said the expectation is to resolve issues like this during the review process.
“That’s what we strive to achieve, and I hope you can appreciate that I’m a human and the parking services branch, we’re human. So we do our best to make sure that we are following our policies and our processes as best we can at all times, but certainly we can make mistakes.”
Markel is frustrated her requests weren’t taken seriously.
“Mistakes happen, I get it, nobody is perfect. But if they would have done their job right from Day 1 — how many hands did this go through and none of these guys, (bylaw prosecutor) Jill Marlin or the manager (Kalim) or the mayor or the councillor (Joel Murray), could even respond to my letter.
“Nobody even bothered to look at the ticket, look at the receipt and say, ‘Oh my God, I apologize.’ ”
For missing about a half-day of work to deal with a return trip to city hall and a court appearance, Markel is hoping for some compensation — although a letter received last Friday stated that none would be provided and that a computer error was the cause of all the hassle.
She contacted her city councillor, Murray, at least four times about compensation, specifically a complimentary leisure pass, and said she was brushed off.
“It’s just like, ‘Just ignore them and they’ll go away,’ ” said Markel.
She is frustrated that, not only has this process wasted her time, it also wasted taxpayer dollars by unnecessarily tying up city staff and court workers.
Perdicaris is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, with Dawn Ridgway scheduled for the next day.
Courtney Ridgway learned this week that her ticket is being withdrawn, due to the Crown witness being unavailable for trial.
In addition to the 210 people who got a trial date to fight parking tickets in 2016, a further 836 people appeared in court, either pleading guilty or having their ticket withdrawn. Another 13,725 people were convicted by default by not appearing when summonsed to court.
If someone is found guilty but refuses to pay, the city can register a lien on their vehicle, seize and sell the vehicle, immobilize the vehicle, send the fine to a collection agency, garnishee wages, seize assets or register against their home’s title.
Perdicaris may find himself in this position.
“I don’t care what they do. I’m just not going to pay this ticket. I don’t feel that it’s fair,” he said.
“I’m just going to make people aware, how the city operates, what laws they have, how badly they are written and enforced, so more people are aware of what’s happening and hopefully more people are going to stand up and say, ‘Look, you’ve got to clean up your mess, you’ve got to clean up your act.’
“After all, it’s the people of Regina that pay the bills of city hall. Without us, there wouldn’t be a city hall. We have to be treated fairly. The laws have to be clear and, first of all, they themselves have to obey them.”