What you need to know about fighting a parking ticket (in Boston)

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2016/02/25/what-you-need-know-about-fighting-parking-ticket/rGXboviYSNli2mKBnNRyJI/story.html



What you need to know about fighting a parking ticket
By Emily Sweeney Globe Staff
February 26, 2016

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1. How best to contest?

These are several ways you can fight a parking ticket. You can call the parking clerk’s office at 617-635-4410, go down to City Hall in person (head to Room 224, the office of the parking clerk), submit your dispute via snail mail, or do it online at www.cityofboston.gov/parking.

~snip~

2. What makes a good appeal?

City officials want to see “some sort of evidence that was not readily available when the ticket was written,” said Fiandaca. It could be a photo, a witness statement, or some kind of other documentation. Say, for example, you tell the city that your car was broken down when you received a ticket. You send in a photo of your car with its hood up. The city may follow up with you and ask for a receipt from a towing company or repair shop as proof, she said.

3. The odds are good.

If you get called in for a hearing, your odds for a dismissal are in your favor. Out of the 9,464 in-person hearings held in fiscal 2015, close to 86 percent were dismissed. “A lot of those tickets are dismissed and they were validly issued,” said Fiandaca. Even if you don’t get to a hearing, you still might beat the ticket. Out of 250,367 tickets that were contested last fiscal year, 71,024 were dismissed, according to city records.

4. Plead your case.

If you live outside of Massachusetts, you can request your hearing to be held via Skype. Otherwise, you’ll have to show up in person and explain yourself to a hearing officer. Those hearing officers are law students from Suffolk University and New England School of Law, and they’ve heard almost every excuse you can imagine. What’s the strangest explanation they’ve heard? According to Maguire, one person recently came in and claimed to have been abducted by aliens. (Now, of course, you’re wondering, did that person get out of the ticket? When we asked Maguire, he laughed and said he wasn’t sure.)

[merrily]

1. Good article. Thanks, happy camper.