Dear Editor:
Dear Hoboken Municipal Court:
Literally, every time I get a parking violation in this town, I have to question the validity of the violation – a huge contributor to why I moved out of this town.
I received two parking tickets in the past two months. One, I have to object to because the ticket was given for an overtime meter at 8:50 p.m. If you try to pay at the meters at 8:50 – that close to 9 p.m. – it DOES NOT WORK. I have tried time and again to put my money in at this time and it will say that it cannot take the payment. I tested it again after the violation was given and sure enough, it does not work. I tried to feed the meter at 8:48 the night of the violation and it rejected the payment.
What is more unsettling is that I have tried to pay my violations for weeks and they could not be found in your system. I searched to no avail. I’ve tried to also get someone on the phone. Despite the violation number, the query pulled up nothing – and there are screen shots attached to attest to this.
Then I noticed something peculiar. In both tickets, my license plate was entered just a hair off of what it actually is. Lo and behold, now the violation costs have gone up – so not only am I to pay a bogus violation, but I am to pay $10 more per ticket for (yet another) PEO oversight. It would be one thing if just one ticket had my plate wrong but two for two? Is this yet another way to get bamboozled in your municipality?
Probably.
I have spent countless hours fighting unwarranted tickets in your town and consequently they all have been dismissed this year because they were without merit. I’ve lost three days of work appearing on violations and sometimes still having to pay court fees, all to be told that I was not at fault. Must be nice to get $30 out of someone anyway when they fight a $30 ticket. Win, win no?
I am fed up and refusing to pay the overage on these that your parking officials’ mistakes have cost me.
Sincerely,
Amanda Palasciano