PARKING-METER FIGHT
Former Vancouver ticket adjudicator takes the city to court, saying its system is unfair
A former Vancouver parking-ticket dispute adjudicator disturbed by the city’s “Big Brother” adjudication system is going to court with hopes of making the experience more human.
Arny Wise, managing director of Apex Dispute Resolution, is asking for a judicial review in B.C. Supreme Court to challenge the procedural fairness of the city’s adjudication system, following changes to the system which he said have made it too “heavy-handed”, and may even serve to deter people from bothering to dispute a ticket.
“I don’t know how to explain why the City of Vancouver does what it does, but that’s how they handle it, in a very kind-of heavy-handed, Big Brother (way),” Wise said.
“You come into a small room, there’s a giant computer screen, the adjudicator and a clerk,” Wise said. “There’s no city representative in attendance to answer any questions. The written evidence is flashed on the computer screen. The written evidence is not sworn and it’s written by an unidentified issuing officer. Just a number.”
Wise was an adjudicator for Vancouver until his contract was terminated last October, when he complained to the city about the system. He said he was refused the chance to discuss his concerns, including his worry that the installation of a video camera in the hearing room was a violation of privacy.
Wise’s firm oversees hearings for 24 other municipalities in B.C. and he said the average parking ticket conviction rate hovers around 80 per cent across the province.
But the City of Vancouver notes on its website less than five per cent of adjudicated tickets are cancelled, and Wise said that is “way out of the ordinary.”
The city implemented its new adjudication process after a November 2010 report highlighted how approximately 24 per cent of bylaw infractions went unpaid.
In 2009, out of 101,000 unpaid parking tickets, 16,000 were disputed or prosecuted by the city, but only 6,000 cases were heard by provincial court because of a twoand-a-half year waiting list, which represented $7-8 million annually in uncollected revenue for the city, the report said.
Some of the changes adopted following the report meant independent adjudicators would conduct hearings instead of provincial judicial justices of the peace, and screening officers could cancel tickets if the officers deemed a hearing unnecessary.
Wise said he contacted city manager Penny Ballem again in April to discuss his concerns about the changes, but was “stiff-armed,” which is why he seeks the review.
Tobin Postma, the city’s communications manager, defended the documents-only process and wrote in an email that it is authorized by the legislation which governs adjudication processes. He said the city complies with the 2003 Local Government Bylaw Notice Enforcement Act to ensure hearings are fair.
Wise has also filed a complaint with B.C.’s privacy commissioner over the installation of the camera in the hearing room, but Postma said it was installed solely for the purpose of additional security and does not record the dialogue of hearings.
Dean Davison, a Vancouver lawyer who has fought city hall on behalf of community centres and hookah shop owners, said he understood the city’s desire to streamline the adjudication system in order to increase profit, but had concerns over how disputers couldn’t challenge bylaw officers’ evidence through cross-examination.
“The idea is that the person should be heard, and to be heard you should be able to challenge the other side’s evidence,” he said.