The Parking Commission at its most recent meeting voted 4-1 to uphold a $50 ticket for a Norwalk woman who double-parked on Elm Street.
Michelle Santiago told Commissioners during her appeal hearing that she’d just left the People’s Bank parking lot on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 1, turned right and right again onto Elm while she waited for a space so she could get lunch at Pinocchio Pizza.
“I was there three minutes, just waiting for a parking spot,” Santiago said during the Commission’s March 14 meeting, held at Town Hall.
“The parking attendant comes behind me, I noticed her behind me, she had gotten out of her car, she was checking other cars, then she got back in her car, so I moved up to see maybe she was marking cars with her stick and then after I’d say a minute and then she comes around and gives me a ticket, tells me I was double-parked. My car was on, my blinkers were on, engine on, everything, I was just sitting there waiting for a parking spot on Elm.”
Though Chairman Keith Richey voted to void the ticket, Commissioners Peter Ogilvie, Pam Crum, Chris Hering and Stuart Stringfellow voted to uphold.
Santiago presented proof, in the form a People’s Bank slip, that she had just left the bank at 12:10 p.m.—the ticket was issued at 12:14 p.m.
Richey during the hearing said, “So you are parked on Elm, you don’t have a parking spot, you are blocking the lane, you have the lights on and everything and your defense is that you are double-parking but that is not parking?”
When Santiago responded that she was in her car, Richey said, “If you pulled into a handicapped spot and you were sitting in that car, do you think that would matter?”
Santiago, who said she works in New Canaan, said, “Yes absolutely.”
Richey said the situation is the same.
“Whether you are in the car or not in the car, the car is the car and if the car is parked, the car is parked, it doesn’t matter if you are in the car or not,” he said.
Crum read out a parking enforcement officer’s report, which said: “Individual was double parked waiting for somebody/anybody to pull out. I drove by Elm and noticed her hazard lights. I looped around the 2nd time and pulled up behind her. I honked. Honked a 2nd time giving her a chance to move on. She did not realize I worked for the Parking Dept until I approached her car with a ticket. I drove around the block, returning to the location where she still remained. Driving by the individual, she shouted, ‘You’re an ass[expletive].’ ”
Santiago disputed parts of the report, saying she saw the parking enforcement officer the first time around.
“The first time she was there, she was right behind me,” Santiago said. “And when she pulled up to me, she said didn’t you see me? I said absolutely I saw you. I was not going to say I didn’t see you. I saw you. And she said well I honked at you. I said I did not hear you. If you had said, ‘Hey you need to move,’ I would have left.”
Santiago also denied that the officer had passed her three times, and data gathered from a license plate reader backed up her claim. According to data from a license plate reader, Santiago’s license plate registered once at 12:14:48 p.m. and again about 25 seconds later, at 12:15:12 p.m.
Ogilvie asked whether Santiago was parked or just waiting for someone to pull out. She said she was “waiting for a parking spot.”
Hering asked why Santiago didn’t “just park in one of the other spots” on Elm Street.
Santiago said she was going to do that, but that she only planned to be there for a few minutes.
Crum asked why, after receiving the ticket, Santiago still was double-parked. Santiago did not answer the question.
Even so, Richey said, “That’s not waiting too long. I personally would void that ticket.”
Crum said, “She was double-parked.”