Parking officials on Thursday voted 2-1 to uphold a Greenwich man’s $25 ticket for parking in an unpaid space in the Morse Court lot.
Though Robert Golden claimed during an appeal hearing that he received the ticket Feb. 10 while waiting on line at a pay machine, Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg said she spoke with the enforcement officer who issued it, and who had a different story.
“Because there have been times in the past where people were at the machine—especially on Saturdays because it’s busy—were at the machines paying and they were missed, he now waits to make sure there is nobody at the machine before he tickets the vehicles,” Miltenberg told members of the Parking Commission at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall. “And so when he went around ticketing there was no line at the machine at that point.”
Golden has a different version of events, saying he parked, went to the pay machine, purchased about one hour’s time, crossed Main Street to New Balance and when he came back to his car, “there was a ticket.”
“It’s a very simple story,” he told the commission. “I went, I parked, I paid.”
Chairman Keith Richey alone voted to void Golden’s ticket.
“So you are saying—that’s the kind of appeal I like—you are actually saying you weren’t guilty of this ticket,” Richey said, referring to a common practice among appellants to admit their guilt while bemoaning the parking rules they violate. “And that you took the appropriate actions and you shouldn’t haven’t gotten the ticket at all.”
Commissioners Peter Ogilvie and Pam Crum voted to uphold the ticket. Commissioner Chris Hering had not yet arrived at the meeting and Stuart Stringfellow was absent.
Golden’s fate appeared to turn when Miltenberg noted that his parking ticket was issued at 12:01 p.m. that Saturday and he purchased his time for the space at 12:07 p.m.
“Like I said, there was a line at the machine,” Golden said.
Asked by Ogilvie whether he paid for parking after getting the ticket, Golden answered: “No, absolutely not. I paid for my parking, I went across the street to the shoe store then when I came back to my car there was a ticket on my car.”
Asked whether he saw a parking attendant at Morse Court, Golden said no.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I can only give you my side of the story.”
However, Miltenberg said she verified with parking enforcement officers that “it would never takes six minutes to pay for as a space, the lots are not that busy nowadays.
During deliberations, Crum said: “The problem I have is it was six minutes after the ticket was issued, so I am going to have to uphold.”
When Richey started to say that “it is very easy to be in that line for six minutes,” Ogilvie pointed at that the commission had already voted, closing the matter.
That one would drive the 30 minutes from Greenwich at 8:00 on a winter night to protest a $25 parking fine borders on the absurd and on that factor alone the ticket should have been voided.
That said, the issues often created by the new 2 hour parking limit in the middle of winter indicate problems to come in May and again from November until year end and therefore the overtime ticket should be more stringent with its fine in order to maintain fluidity on street.
Kindly, if I may expound. The parking issue is often created by those with bad manners. There are those who are of employment in town who are taking advantage of the generosity shown to shoppers/diners with the 2 hour limit. They park on street right after the enforcement person passes. That behavior essentially translates into 4 hour parking for them. That is poor etiquette. When I served on the Parking Commission I regularly said concentrate on those abusers and lighten up on true shoppers. I would always receive the response that such was “selective enforcement”. I would then respond “so what? do it anyway”. the standard response was always “no”.
we are trying to get store/restaurant patrons to be active in our village. How much sense does it make for the very same local employees yearning for more lively business to be usurping the very same spaces the desired patron would use?