Weekday afternoons, Jersey City resident Michael Walters parks his four-door sedan in front of his home on Prospect Street. Walters has lived there for more than half a year, and there are no signs saying it’s prohibited to park there.
In less than five months, Walters has found three parking tickets under the windshield wiper of his car while parked there. One ticket was for parking his “tractor-trailer” illegally, even though Walters does not own a tractor-trailer. The others were for parking in a prohibited area. The fine for each was to be $29.
Although some might pay the fine to avoid the aggravation of going to court, Walters was incensed. He took photographs of the location where he parked his car and brought his case to court.
“I know I parked my car in a legal spot,” Walters said last week. “The people who take their case to court are not crooked. All they want is what’s fair.”
On Feb. 6, Walters went for the fourth time to the parking violation court at the Jersey City Justice Center on 365 Summit Ave. (He also had been there once for a prohibited parking ticket in a different part of town, and gotten his fine reduced from $29 to $10). Newly appointed judge Pauline Sica recognized Walters as soon as she saw him in the courtroom.
“Oh, you’re back again, Mr. Walters,” Judge Sica said.
Walters had handed the court clerk a copy of his ticket upon entering the courtroom. After that, he had waited for the clerk to call his name. After almost a dozen people, Walters was called to go before the judge to plead his case.
He showed Judge Sica pictures of his car was parked legally on the corner of Prospect Street and Oakland Avenue. The judge dismissed the ticket, stating that the person who issued the ticket had made a mistake. So far Walters has had three tickets dismissed in court.
“In this court we aim to serve the residents of this city adequately,” the judge said during the hearings.
Walters said he thinks more people would come to court and fight their parking tickets, but that some of them cannot because of work schedules and other obligations.
“It’s possible that a lot of people get wrongful tickets, but they don’t have time to fight it,” Walters said.
Walters is not the only person to have his parking tickets dismissed before a judge. In fact, 5 percent of the parking violations issued each month by the city are dismissed in court, according to Court Director Martin Dolan.
Parking violation court meets Monday through Thursday at 6 p.m.
30,000 per month
Jersey City issues an average of 30,000 parking tickets every month.
In January, 1,529 tickets were dismissed. Parking tickets are issued by police officers or the enforcers from the city’s Parking Authority.
Parking tickets can be dismissed if the information on it is found to be incorrect, there is substantial evidence showing the ticket issued was wrong, or there are any other transposition errors, Dolan said.
Jersey City’s Parking Authority, in 1997, adapted New Jersey’s computerized system for parking tickets. After a ticket is issued, the violation information goes directly into a computer database network in the city. There, the database keeps a file of the offense until the ticket is paid, Dolan said.
Before the electronic system, city officials had to write the ticket and later process it – a much longer method.
More than 75 percent of the tickets issued are for street sweeping violations ($16) and for parking in a prohibited area ($29), according to Dolan.
According to a spokeswoman for Parking Authority Director Tom Kane, 105 full-time Parking Authority employees walk the streets of the city issuing parking tickets. The retired deputy chief of the Jersey City Police Department, Kane has been director for less than three months, and ensures that his employees are properly trained to do their duties. The Parking Authority meets every third Tuesday of the month.
v If a person fails to pay a ticket, a failure-to-appear in court notice is issued with a $10 penalty. After about a month, a third notice is issued with another $10. Eventually, if the person has yet to pay for the fine, a proposal for license suspension is issued.
After that, if the city has not heard from an individual, the Department of Motor Vehicle suspends the driver’s license. Re-activating a license is $50 in New Jersey, Dolan said. But the person must, of course, pay the other accrued charges.
“People in Jersey City are not stupid,” Dolan said. “They’ve gotten a lot better in paying.”
During the last fiscal year, Jersey City collected $13,807,000 in parking violation fines, and $9,713,000 of that went to the city’s operating budget, according to Dolan.
“If you don’t like your ticket, go to court,” Dolan said.