A local woman appealing a $20 parking ticket she had received in Morse Court told officials this month that New Canaan’s lack of a grace period for those who overstay a meter by even a few minutes makes the town “even tougher than the Swiss” when it comes to enforcement.
An inconsiderate parking job in the Walgreen’s lot on Jan. 25, 2016. SE photo
Jane Little told members of the Parking Commission at their most recent regular meeting that she used to live in Geneva, Switzerland, where “they created watches” and people are “as precise as precise can be.”
“Nothing is free in Switzerland—at the grocery store, you pay for parking,” Little said during the commission’s Jan. 14 meeting, held in Town Hall. “There is no free parking anywhere in Switzerland, so when confronted with this situation and I go up in French and ask the parking attendant: ‘I am here. You see me.’ They would tear it up.” (Here, Little made a tearing-up gesture with her hands.)
Parking Commission Chairman Keith Richey responded: “Unfortunately, our parking attendants do not speak French.”
Ultimately, the commission unanimously upheld the $20 ticket (it came out later that Little’s husband likely had been forgiven a parking ticket at Talmadge Hill within the past year, and may not have told his wife about it—“We don’t want to cause marital discord,” Richey said), though the discussion triggered what could amount to a new grace-period policy in the Parking Bureau.
According to Little, she was issued a ticket at 12:01 p.m., exactly three minutes after her meter had expired while she attended a class at a nearby barre studio.
“Admittedly I should have put the extra 50 cents in—I know that now,” Little said. “I am pretty new to town, I moved here one year ago. And I have not used that lot a whole lot.”
She called for a grace period of three minutes, and Richey said the difficulty for the commission is in arguing how long that period would be.
“So basically, there is no grace period,” Richey said. “You want a grace period? Put another 50 cents or a dollar in, and then guess what? You have a whole hour grace period for 50 cents or a dollar. So I am not aware of any time that we have voided a ticket for someone who basically said, ‘Yes, I paid for an insufficient amount of time, I was only a couple of minutes late.’ ”
Parking Bureau Superintendent said that, in fairness to Little, some other towns do “build a grace period into the expiration time.”
“Meaning, if a meter were going to expire at 4:30 they may collectively decide, we will give everybody five minutes and they actually don’t even tell you that it has expired until extra five minutes has been kicked in. It is possible to [build the grace period into New Canaan’s meters]. The question becomes, ‘How much?’ Is it five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes? I think three minutes is different from 20 minutes.”
Richey asked Miller to find out whether a grace period of, say, five minutes could be built into New Canaan’s meter machines.
Commissioner Rick Franco said that, should it pass, such matters should not be publicized.
“Those are little nice things that should never see the light of day,” he said. “People should go to the office. It should be discreetly handled and say, ‘Try not to do it again or try to be more attentive.’ ”
(On finding out that Little had lived in Geneva, Richey asked whether she knew an Ian Clinton—no, she did not.)