Prosecution pulled – but no apology
The Invercargill City Council has pulled out of a hearing to pursue a parking fine from Paul Hutchinson, one of two people who disputed what an Invercargill District Court has ruled was a faulty council bylaw process.
But the council has yet to respond to his request for an apology to him and “all the many other people who have been caught out’’ and paid parking fines imposed by the council.
Hutchinson, from Colac Bay, and Melvin Butler of Auto Repossessions Ltd, each independently disputed their $40 parking fines, saying the wording on the council’s parking kiosks had not made clear that to activate the offer of 30 minutes of free parking they needed to key in their licence plate numbers.
Butler’s case came to court first, on February 21, even though the council had by then made changes to make the wording on the meters more clear.
The court rejected the council’s case, accepting one of the points made by Butler’s lawyer Kristy Rusher that the council’s parking bylaw had not specified any requirement to activate a parking meter.
The council’s lawyer, Michael Morris, wrote to the court a week later to withdraw the infringement notice against Hutchinson, who was angered anew when he read the wording of that request.
Morris noted in his letter to the court that “ignorance is no defence’’ and it was up to all users and visitors to any town in New Zealand to make themselves aware of what was needed to park there legally.
“It is very clear that the defendant failed to do this and has chosen not to accept the obligation to inform himself.’’
Morris acknowledged, however, that it was “untenable for the prosecutor to continue with this matter’’ given the finding in the Butler case that an error in the bylaw disconnected it from the the infringement notice’s allegation.
In a detailed reply, Hutchinson said it was not his ignorance that had caused the situation. “It was ICC’s poorly worded kiosk instructions that had tripped up myself and goodness knows how many other users.”
He had been a permanent resident in New Zealand, England and Australia, and had hired cars in Japan, Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Ireland and the United States, all while successfully engaging with the various forms of their paid parking systems. Only in Invercargill had he struck a problem.
“The time and money spent by the intransigent ICC parking and enforcement department defending poorly drafted bylaws is an absolute disgrace to the Invercargill ratepayers,’’ he said.
“There should be an apology to myself and all the many other people who have been caught out. Unfortunately I expect hell will freeze over before there will be any acknowledgement from within ICC of the waste of my time and [council staff] time, and and that of all the other people caught out by the poorly worded kiosk instructions.’’
The council has yet to respond to a Southland Times request to respond to Hutchinson’s call for an apology.
Invercargill mayor Nobby Clark did, however, say in an internal email, which he copied Hutchinson into, that there was “a good deal of truth’’ in what Hutchinson had said.
“I’ve previously had plenty of feedback by parkers not knowing they had to load their plate number to access the 30 minutes free parking,’’ the mayor said.