Dear Editor:
My family and I are frequent visitors to Secaucus, and we think it’s a great little town. We shop there often. Recently, I realized that I was late in paying a parking ticket that we received there in the municipal parking for an expired meter. I called the Traffic Court office and asked how much I owed. The woman I spoke to called up my account on the computer and told me that the cost was $32, doubled because I was of course, late in paying. Not a problem, my fault as I had mislaid the invoice I had received in the mail previously. I asked her if that was everything, and how should I pay? She told me to simply send in a check to the address listed on the summons. I did that, that very same day, and went on about business as usual.
This was November 14th.
On November 25th, I received a notice in the mail once again that the ticket had not been paid and that the fine had jumped to $64. In the same mail more notices from both Secaucus and the State of New Jersey that my license had been suspended on November 15th! I called the Secaucus Violations Bureau again and asked how this could be, as I had done exactly what I had been told to do. No answers to be had there. I asked if the employee would have seen on the computer screen what the dates on the fines were and was told yes. I then asked why this employee could not have simply mentioned that it was due to be suspended on the very next day instead of telling me to mail in a check? No clue. I could have easily driven over and paid the fine on the 14th, in person, from my office approximately 10 minutes away and that would have ended it all – if she had just told me that I needed to!
Instead, my wife and I both had to cancel our Thanksgving plans and take today (11/26) off of work so she could drive me to Secaucus and pay the $64 fine there; then drive me to Wayne and sit and wait for three hours to pay the $100 to have my license restored.
That $132 spent on this fiasco was money that I would have spent in Secaucus – at Acme, or Marra’s or Daffy’s or even Mill Creek Mall. Instead, it went to the state because of some employee’s failure to do their job properly or just to help. To the different Secaucus store owners, — for this Christmas and thereafter, my family’s shopping dollars will go to Edgewater Commons, or Newport Mall, or the stores in Paramus.
Laura and Steven Bowers