No where in the world is the phrase “you can’t fight City Hall” more applicable than in San Francisco, especially if you intend on attempting to fight a parking ticket. The City of San Francisco, which is only about 46 square miles, is much like New York City in that parking space is limited and it is therefore insanely costly to park there. It will cost you $2 for an average hour at a meter, and lot parking downtown, if you can find one close to your final destination, is outrageously priced. Even many residential areas require a parking permit from its residents, which cost $60 per year. Unlike New York City or any other major burg, where an offender may have a prayer in fighting a parking ticket, it is highly unlikely that any defendant in San Francisco is going to turn a parking violation in his or her favor.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the City of San Francisco makes about $90 million dollars a year from parking tickets alone. Recent discussions are underway to increase the fine $10 increasing the most common ticket for a street cleaning violation from $40 to $50 per ticket. And therein lies my own pitiful tale of trying to take on City Hall.
San Francisco is diligent about street cleaning. You could almost say that the City is militant about street cleaning. Every week, each street is cleaned twice, one day on one side, then another day on the other. It is true that signs are posted on every street outlining what day and between what time street cleaning will commence. Smart residents with automobiles and no off-street parking are savvy in eluding parking enforcement, which literally sweeps (pun intended) through the area during street cleaning days, methodically churning out $40 parking tickets to those hapless fools who are caught unawares.
Consider me a hapless fool.
During July 2005, we were moving my son into his shared home where he was going to reside while in college. I had rented a car, and it was full of his personal effects. We dropped a load off, and headed off to Target to get more household equipment that he was going to need.
There was no driveway or off-street parking in front of the home, so I parked the car on the street and we hurried to unload. During one of the trips into the house, my son remarked to me in passing that a man walking down the street was in the process of writing a ticket for my rental car, and he hadn’t even gotten to the car yet. Parking enforcement told my son we were parked illegally during street cleaning, as he handed him the ticket.
I yelled down to my son to tell the man I would move in a minute but it was too late. I was stung.
After taking a look at the ticket ($40! We don’t have fines that steep in Michigan!), I was quite upset. I hadn’t seen a “No Parking” street cleaning sign, or I would have never parked illegally. When we went outside to investigate, we found the sign which was a good 16 feet up on a pole and mostly camouflaged by a huge pine tree on the boulevard. The sign was also rather weather-beaten and it would have taken a sharp eagle’s eye to make out the words from the driver seat of a car.
I planned on fighting the ticket (I thought I had good reasons: neophyte to the City, defective sign, monster tree obstructing signage), so I took plenty of photographs and wrote a nice, descriptive letter to the Powers That Be, in accordance to the ticket-fighting procedures outlined on the back of my citation. I mailed all by certified mail, and then I waited.
And I waited.
In the meantime, the car rental place was served notice of my ticket, and they decided to take $40 by way of my credit card. I called them in advance and let them know that I was fighting the ticket, and in fact, sent them a copy of my letter and photos, but according to their policy, they had to charge me for the ticket. If I later won in court, I could be reimbursed.
About three weeks later, my son reported that the offending tree had been removed.
Sometime in October, about three months after my run-in with parking enforcement, I received a nice letter from the City of San Francisco saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
It’s not much better for residents of San Francisco or for those who live elsewhere in California. It took five tickets over a few months time for my son, by then a resident, to get the hang of parking his car elsewhere on street cleaning day. When his license tabs came up for renewal the following July, he couldn’t get them until all the tickets were paid in full. My son has lived there three years, and he’s yet to find a person who has beaten a parking ticket.
My advice for those who drive and park in San Francisco: pay attention to street cleaning days.
My advice for those who are unfortunate enough to get a parking ticket there: get out your checkbook. Better yet, San Francisco makes it easy to pay by credit card by providing an online portal.
You can’t beat this City Hall.
