Ticketed on Presidents Day? You Might Be In Luck

Photo courtesy of
‘Amount Due’
courtesy of ‘maxedaperture’

Were you (un)fortunate enough to have not heard about the snow emergency (declared Sunday evening, aka Valentines Day) and got smacked with a nice big $250 ticket for parking on a snow emergency route on February 15th? I don’t know about you but I sure wasn’t checking to see if there was a snow emergency that night. Well, City Council members Brown and Wells are fighting in your corner to have those forgiven. Give them a hug.

John has lived in DC since attending CUA’s Architecture school starting in 1995. He is a UI/UX/Design guru for LivingSocial and also plays in numerous bands (Juniper Lane, Rotoscope, Boboroshi & Kynz) and loves hyping people on eating local food, sustainable human settlement patterns, gardening, and good old fashioned rock and roll and electronica. He runs the dirt lab (aka mega garden) for WeLoveDC, where he eats most of the proceeds.

8 thoughts on “Ticketed on Presidents Day? You Might Be In Luck”

  1. I received one on that Saturday. I drove into the city from Arlington, didn’t see a single sign coming into DC saying there was a “snow emergency,” nor a sign on the street block that I parked at saying it was a snow emergency route anyway. Moreover, it was already plowed and I paid the meter! When I confronted the cop who was ticketing cars on perhaps the only street where you could park (so they could remove snow on all of the other 90% of streets) he had no compassion.

    I think that all of these ridculous tickets should be null and void because the notice was not legally sufficient and the city was merely using the fine as a way to generate revenue. I moved my car (hey if it was towed to a different spot so they could remove snow I might feel differently), but I was smacked illegally with this fine. But as is, the city is asking for a class action lawsuit.

  2. I feel your pain Dan. Does anyone of the legal persuasion know if this falls under “failure of notice” or if it’s more the “not knowing the law is not freedom to ignore it”? With something so conditional, you’d think they’d at least have some kind of notice on the inbound major traffic avenues from Virginia and Maryland (there aren’t THAT many).

  3. Today was the 15-day deadline to pay that ridiculous ticket, so I went ahead and paid it just to have it over with. If I take time off work to contest the ticket, I don’t get paid. Hmm, think the city gives refunds for ineptitude?

  5. 15 days?! Where do you get that?

    The back of the ticket clearly says if the payment or request for a hearing is not paid within 30 days it doubles, and then says you have 60 days to request a hearing in person or pay.

    EVERYONE SHOULD CONTEST THESE TICKETS! (Unless of course you make more than $250 in a 4 hour period which is what I est. it will take to deal with it.)

  6. And, btw, what if you parked your car legally, left town, and then got back and it was towed because of this ALLEGED declaration? Did the Mayer provide proper notice to people in Florida, or California who were on vacation so they could get friends to move their cars? Hell no! I couldn’t even get back to the city because the airports were shut down. Now how the heck is any of that MY fault!?!

  7. When I went to pick my car up, they specifically told me (twice, in fact) that I had 15 days to pay. Just figured it was one of those “ignorance of the law” situations. Didn’t realize so many others got screwed too.

  8. I got one as well, at 9:45 AM on 16th street….only 45 Minutes after they declared it. There were no warnings, no signs, no anything for a snow emergency route. I’m from VA and fairly ignorant to DC parking restrictions which is clearly my fault but this seems ridiculous, not to mention the amount of the fine and the fact that..IT DIDN’T EVEN SNOW!!!!!

    I will contest the ticket and if I have to pay then my GF can visit me, and I’m boycotting DC!