Officials are upholding a $75 fine for a woman who parked her car such that it obstructed a pedestrian crosswalk at Main Street and East Avenue while she ran into the now-closed Turkish coffee shop there for a cup of joe.
Though the motorist, Ying Emma Zhang, told members of the Parking Commission that her car was just “a little bit” into the crosswalk, that claim alone has no bearing on the violation committed, officials said.
“Unfortunately, in the parking world, it’s like being a little bit pregnant,” Chairman Keith Richey said during Zhang’s appeal hearing, held Nov. 9 at Town Hall.
Zhang said she incurred the ticket more than one month prior to the hearing.
“I was just right in front of coffee shop on the coffee shop on Main Street, just for like five minutes to get a coffee and … then when I came out I found the car with a parking ticket,” she said.
Pressed to make a cogent argument in her own defense, Zhang said” “I do not know how much is considered obstructing because I thought just my car was a little bit into” the crosswalk.
Richey responded: “So you know for the future, any intrusion is a violation. Just like any intrusion in a handicapped spot is a violation. There is no margin for error.”
Ultimately the commission voted 3-0 to uphold the ticket. Richey and commissioners Pam Crum and Peter Ogilvie voted. Commissioner Chris Hering was late to the meeting, and Stuart Stringfellow was absent.
Ogilvie noted that Zhang’s written appeal letter appeared to belie her verbal argument.
“In your written explanation, you say you stopped to deliver a package to the William Raveis real estate office,” Ogilvie said. “So what happened to the coffee or the package or both?”
Zhang responded that she “thought I did the coffee first.”
“But only for a few minutes, it’s not that long,” she said.
During the hearing, Richey asked Zhang whether there was “anything else you want to tell us that would cause us to say you had an argument for why you were innocent or an argument for why we should show you mercy?”
Zhang noted that the violation “was my first time.”
“I really didn’t know it was a $75 fine,” she said.
Richey told Zhang that she should “not be optimistic” about her appeal because “you admit you parked in the pedestrian zone.”
“You really have no argument for why you had special circumstances,” he said, such as that she had struck someone in the leg while parking and had to back up in order to take that imagine injured person to the hospital.
The commission wasted little time discussing Zhang’s case before voting unanimously to uphold the ticket. During the closed deliberation, Crum noted that Zhang in fact “wasn’t parked just a little bit” into the crosswalk but was “past the tires.”