Parking Tickets

Baltimore County police might be giving up their duties when it comes to writing parking tickets, but that doesn't mean motorists who let the red "expired" sign pop up on county parking meters can relax.Kenneth F. Mills Jr., director of the county's revenue authority, is working on a plan to use eight parking enforcement officers to write parking tickets. The officers would work for the revenue authority and enforce parking laws applying to the county's 1,822 meters.The proposed system is similar to those used by Baltimore and Montgomery County.

After reading about what Frederick does with parking tickets ("A place for pardons," March 25), I have to write to you about my recent experiences. Being half Irish I celebrate what has become St Patrick's month. On Saturday, March 12, we met some friends at the James Joyce Irish bar on President Street to start our celebrating. Then on St. Patrick's Day we started our day at Mass at St Patrick's Church on Broadway. From there we go to Duda's Tavern on Thames Street for lunch. Here is how the city rips people off: When we found a parking space on Saturday, the meter would only let us pay for two hours.

Iwent to parking court this week to battle for justice, to preserve my honor and to avoid coughing up $52. Rather than hiring a lawyer, I served as my own advocate. My courtroom performance did not go exactly as I planned. It's safe to say I represent no threat to the livelihood of lawyers. At issue was whether I parked too close to a fire hydrant at the corner of Park Avenue and Mosher Street, a few doors away from my home. The ticket placed on my station wagon said I had failed to give the hydrant at least 15 feet leeway.

Municipal parking meters have gotten a bum rap over the years. Since the first one was installed in Oklahoma City 76 years ago, their chief purpose has been to limit the amount of time any one vehicle can occupy a parking space. As any urban business owner knows, this is a vital task. Customers can't reach stores if parking spaces are never vacated. But alas — as any driver can tell you — the parking regulatory function of the meter has gradually been superseded over time by its moneymaking abilities.

Twenty-three thousand drivers are on Lorna Brown's and Cheryl Williams' hit list.Brown and Williams boot cars for a living. And if they had their way, they would boot everybody on the hit list -- every last one of you.No car parked on a city street is safe from these keepers of the boot if the car has three or more tickets that are more than 30days old.Brown and Williams love their job, even though they have been called profane names and, in one instance, nearly...

Municipal parking meters have gotten a bum rap over the years. Since the first one was installed in Oklahoma City 76 years ago, their chief purpose has been to limit the amount of time any one vehicle can occupy a parking space. As any urban business owner knows, this is a vital task. Customers can't reach stores if parking spaces are never vacated. But alas — as any driver can tell you — the parking regulatory function of the meter has gradually been superseded over time by its moneymaking abilities.

Parking scofflaws, beware: Baltimore County is ready to roll out the wreckers.Determined to wring every penny it can out of those who fail to pay parking tickets, the county is sending letters to more than 300 motorists, warning that their vehicles might be confiscated if they don't pay up.Those letters -- aimed at county residents with three or more tickets, who owe a collective $235,000 -- are part of an aggressive enforcement effort expected to pull...

Jim Tudor Parking enforcement officer Baltimore County government Salary --$13.66 an hour Age --56 Years on the job --Two How he got started --Tudor retired from his job with General Motors after working there 33 years. Wanting to stay active, he took the job with parking enforcement. "I want to keep busy. This job keeps me walking." Typical day --Tudor works Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. After arriving at work he is assigned to a specific area in Baltimore County to patrol for parking violations.

Paul Josephson spent hours yesterday poring over a biography of Benjamin Franklin, a man who prided himself on scrupulously settling his debts. Josephson had all that time to read because he was stuck in a line that snaked around a city block - a huge queue of people waiting to pay delinquent parking tickets that had become, like some wines, more expensive with age. The crowd was taking advantage of the first day of a two-day amnesty program, which forgives...

Joe Mueller is a really nice guy, but almost everyone in Towson hates to see him coming.Why? Because Mueller can spot an expired meter half a block away and write a ticket in less than 10 seconds flat. He averages 30 to 50 tickets a day, five days a week. His record high is 104 in one day. In the six years that he's walked Towson's business district, he's probably tagged more than 40,000 parking violators.In fact, Mueller and his merry gang of meter men write more than $1 million in parking tickets a year in Baltimore County, or nearly half the $2.2 million the county collects.

Ever feel like you're gambling when you don't feed the parking meter or race through that just-turned-red light? Now a new website — and soon a smartphone application — will help Baltimore drivers know the odds of receiving a ticket wherever they illegally park their car, run a red light or exceed the speed limit. SpotAgent.com is the creation of James Schaffer and Shea Frederick, Baltimore computer professionals who are among the first to create a web application using a recently released trove of data on Baltimore — information about everything from parking to crime to property taxes.

For several weeks, parking agents weren't notified of court hearings and people fighting parking tickets were walking out of court, their cases dismissed. Then the problem was solved and the parking agents were back to testify, but the judges were still substantially reducing fines and eliminating court fees. Even those who pleaded "guilty with an explanation" were being found not guilty, if their explanations seemed plausible. But now, after a string of news articles based on hearings in District Court on Patapsco Avenue, not only are the parking agents back but the judges have gotten tougher on parking miscreants.

The parking agents are back in parking court. Well, at least one of them was, on Wednesday morning at the John R. Hargrove District Court building on Patapsco Avenue in South Baltimore. Just one reputed miscreant, out of more than 70 people in court that day, requested the presence of the person who wrote the ticket. And unlike previous weeks — in which parking agents were daily no-shows in court because they never received their summons, prompting judges to dismiss hundreds of cases — an officer identified only as Agent Farmer showed up to testify.

Kashi Walker's cell phone went off shortly after noon. A Baltimore fire commander who attends the Guilford Avenue church where Walker is an associate minister was on the line. Two people in an apartment across the street had just died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Grieving relatives had gathered. Could he open the New Second Missionary Baptist Church as a crisis center? Walker rushed over in the four-door Chrysler sedan the church owns. He parked on Lanvale Street, next to a side entrance, and got a dozen people out of the cold and into his warm sanctuary, where they could cry in and talk to investigators in private.

In his Dec. 17 article, "Parking agents are no-shows," Peter Hermann informs his readers about a day in Baltimore City District Court, at the Patapsco Avenue location, when 75 parking tickets were dismissed because the parking agents did not appear in court. The mandate of the District Court of Maryland, a part of the Maryland Judiciary, is to adjudicate disputes, in a process providing equal and exact justice for all of the litigants; it does not and should not favor one litigant over another, even when one of them is a government entity.

Few things get the blood boiling like double parking. You roll down the street and there is some vehicle with its tail lights flashing, blocking your way. You slam on the brakes and mutter to yourself, "Why doesn't that bozo park around the corner?" That presumes there is space around the corner, which is often not the case in crowded city neighborhoods. Or it overlooks the fact that the driver is unloading the kids, the groceries or grandma in front of his or her home, instances in which maneuvering to get the shortest distance to the front door matters.

Those with overdue Baltimore parking tickets could squeak out of paying hefty fines under a measure to be introduced by a City Council member at Monday night's meeting. Councilman Bill Henry has drafted a bill that would provide a five-day window for those with outstanding parking tickets to pay the original fine but be excused all late payments. The goal, said Henry, is to lure in a large group to pay parking tickets, bringing a spike in funds to help close the city's $121 million budget shortfall.

After reading about what Frederick does with parking tickets ("A place for pardons," March 25), I have to write to you about my recent experiences. Being half Irish I celebrate what has become St Patrick's month. On Saturday, March 12, we met some friends at the James Joyce Irish bar on President Street to start our celebrating. Then on St. Patrick's Day we started our day at Mass at St Patrick's Church on Broadway. From there we go to Duda's Tavern on Thames Street for lunch. Here is how the city rips people off: When we found a parking space on Saturday, the meter would only let us pay for two hours.

Those with overdue Baltimore parking tickets could squeak out of paying hefty fines under a measure to be introduced by a City Council member at Monday night's meeting. Councilman Bill Henry has drafted a bill that would provide a five-day window for those with outstanding parking tickets to pay the original fine but be excused all late payments. The goal, said Henry, is to lure in a large group to pay parking tickets, bringing a spike in funds to help close the city's $121 million budget shortfall.

In February 2009, Josh Roberts of Seattle got a letter from a law firm telling him he owed $948 for a parking ticket he was issued in May of 2004 in Baltimore. That's the month he had moved back to his home state of Washington, and he doesn't contest the ticket, though he doesn't remember receiving it. Like tens of thousands of city-anointed scofflaws, Roberts found himself in the midst of an aggressive campaign to collect overdue parking fines. The law firm hired to collect has sent out notices to more than 80,000 people who have been fined but have not paid since 2006, and who not only owe the fine on the initial ticket, but late penalties as well.