My wife works in an adjacent town, and parks in a municipal parking lot. The parking meters are regularly inspected by meter maids who are quite aggressive about writing tickets. I am quite sure the city makes a ton of money off the lot. At any rate, my wife regularly feeds the meter-yet, she (and her co-workers) regularly get tickets…before the meters have run out. We immediately dispute these citations , and they are always dismissed. Last week, my wife got a ticket, so she took a photo of the meter (showing 1 hour left), and sent it to city hall-no response.
I do believe, and have proof, that the meter maids are running a racket here…what can I do to bust it?
What would the racket be? I don’t really see what would be in it for the meter-maids to write extra tickets. They don’t get to personally keep the fines.
Anyhoo, a picture of a meter with time on it doesn’t really prove anything. Unless the meters store info about what money goes in when (which I rather doubt) I don’t really see any way to prove your being falsely ticketed short of hiding in the bushes with a camera and telephoto lens.
Their supervisors might hint or outright tell the MMs that they need to write a certain number of tickets a day, and their jobs might depend on meeting that quota.
Have her take a timestamped picture (or video?) each and every single time she feeds money into the meter, before and after. Keep doing this, and present that record to the courts next time she gets an unjust ticket? 
Such a record might help?
In the town that I used to live in the meter maids would find a meter with a few minutes left on it and basically wait for it to run down, then write a ticket. Now this is an entirely different situation than yours, but they were forced to abandon that practice by the number of people who complained (i.e. wrote letters to the local paper, wrote to city hall, went to council meetings, etc.). At the very least, you need to mobilize your wife’s co-workers to be vocal about it. The only scam here is a municipality trying to maximize its revenues. The meter maids have a quota (unofficial, of course) and they respond by writing bogus tickets when they can’t get enough legitimate ones. They will continue to do that until it becomes an issue they can’t ignore.
It’s quite possible that it’s not legal to simply sit in a space all day, feeding the meter every couple of hours. Meters often aren’t only about revenue–they’re also about creating parking “turnover”.
This was my thought as soon as I saw that the OP’s wife has been feeding the meter. In our town, you have to actually move your car to another spot. They mark the tires with chalk. If you’ve been in one spot longer than the total time allowed for the meter (I think most meters cap at 2 hrs) and you still have chalk on your tire, it means you haven’t moved your car. Even if you’ve put money in the meter and it still has time on it, you’re in violation. I’ll bet this town has a similar ordinance.
That’s my thought as well. Check the rules for the town and that lot.
Moved MPSIMS --> IMHO.
Are we really still using the term “meter maids”? Seems like it would have gone the way of “Stewardesses.”
Well, it is Ralph, so she’s a mter maid.
Lvely Rta, mter miad…
I agree that there is probably a time limit on the space. In some spaces around here, there is a two-hour limit. If the meter reader chalks your tire and that chalk mark is still showing over two hours later, you will get a ticket regardless of what is on the meter.
If the tickets are for exceeding the time limit to be in a certain space, why have they been dismissed?
“meter bitches” never really caught on.
I’ve occasionally used the term “meter reader” which has a fun internal rhyme to say. But, though I hadn’t really thought about it before, I call men in the job “meter maids”, too.
I think of meter readers as the people who come to your house to check the gas meter.
My thought as well. I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where feeding the meter was legal - they want you to move your car when the time is up.
I thought about the time limit issue as well, but dismissed it because it was a lot, rather than on street parking. I haven’t encountered lots with limitations other than “no overnight parking”.
Also, I don’t think most places still use the “chalk on the tires” method. They have scanners that record license plate numbers and locations. The parking enforcement official simply has to drive down the street and the computer will alert when a car has been there too long.
Must depend on location.
Meters here you can feed all day. In one location, I’ve known people that went out hourly and fed nickels to every meter on the street getting ready to expire. (OK, that’s been a few years ago.)
Unmetered spaces have time limits and get the chalked tires.
I believe this may be changing, though, as we’ve just bought some giant new metering “system” to increase the amount of money the city makes off of parking. Don’t tell them about the automated scanners for parking monitoring, or we’ll have to buy that too.
I think the badges say “parking enforcement officer.”