While picking up a purchased item from a store in Santa Fe’s plaza last week, I briefly parked in a posted 20 minute loading zone. It was difficult to tell where the loading zone ended and the metered parking began so I plugged some change in the closest meter for good measure and was away from my vehicle for 11 minutes according to the meter… 1:15 to 1:04.
When I came back with my package, a violation ticket was on my windshield. The fine’s $35.00 US.
I immediately found a police officer who said the parking police were responsible, not them, and that I could go down the street then and talk to them about it. I walked the four blocks only to discover the cop had lied, they were closed.
I think this is unjust because I was there for less than the alloted time according to the city’s own meter. I was using a loading zone for a temporary stop to pick something up, not as a parking space, and their meters are placed aligned with the white lined spaces so you can’t tell to which space they apply giving you a 50/50 chance of plugging change into the correct meter.
After calling the clerk, I’ve written a letter to the judge asking that this be dismissed. If she refuses, what recourse does one state (New Mexico) have to enforce their penalty upon the resident of another state (Texas)?
You have a TX license, and your car is registered in TX? Two factors to consider. First, does NM have a reciprocity agreement with TX? If so, NM may treat this as a NM violation, you may have trouble getting your license or registration renewed if you don’t pay it. Second, if you remain in NM, you could be towed, booted, or even detained. Depends on how strict they are. (Once in Michigan I failed to pay a ticket I received while on a bicycle, and a year later was escorted to a police station to pay the fine when I got pulled over in my car.) Or, nothing at all might happen.
We’ve already returned home but yeah, I don’t want any future trouble.
A merchant there offered, without me even asking, that the parking police were in his words “real b*st%rds” there, actively ticketing people for driving around the plaza while either talking on their cell phone of not using a seat belt and that they make a great deal of money with their agressive ticketing.
Now I’m no fan of cell phone drivers but no where did we see this ordinance posted anywhere in our travels within the state. Similarly, although I always use my seat belt, I can understand those that didn’t put it on when they’re moving from shop to shop at 5 mph. The police seem a tad agressive and, like I said, that one sent me on an 8 block errand she knew would do no good. She lied, plain and simple, and that kinda ticks me.
So while I want to be fair, I’m also of a mind this is crap.
I suggest you look at the situation as possibly being the case the officer had no idea the offic of the traffic cops was closed, so your level of peevity goes down.
Usually, what will happen at worst is that the civil fine, if unpaid, can get reported to the NM motor vehicle department, which might have an agreement with the Texas version of the same department to slap any unpaid fines on your registration, forcing you to pay up or go unregistered.
However, it’s up to you to decide what is worth the hassle. If you really were parked partway in a loading zone, and you really weren’t in it for more than 20 min., you can always simply try asking that the city dismiss the fine. I’d do so without any criticism of the traffic police it employs.
My SO and I were wrapping up the loan processing, in order to buy a new house. Closing was within a couple of weeks. We get a call from the loan officer. The bank wanted us to clean something off of my SO’s credit report, before for they would sign off on the loan. It seems at some point, he had gotten a parking ticket. We never saw it, so we never paid it. The city never contacted us about it, but sold it off to a collection agency, who also never called us about it. There is sat, for about a year, until the day that we needed to get a loan. Then they had us over a barrel. We could probably have fought it, and the additional fees and fines that were attached, but we needed it cleared off NOW! The mortgage was more important.
We never did get a straight answer on this, but I’m convinced that neither the city, nor the collection agency tried to collect this, because the amount was so small. It was more efficent to tack on fees, and wait for people to pay when they needed to have it cleared off of their records.
Both states are members of the Driver’s Licence Compact/Non Resident Violator’s Compact. This means they share ticket info and agree to enforce each other’s penalties. I was unable to find out what New Mexico’s penalties for not paying a parking ticket but in Texas is can me suspension of driving priveliges and/or non renewal of the driver’s license. Getting pulled over for a minor traffic offense and ending up with a ticket for driving on a suspended license can get expensive, $35 sounds like a cheap way to guarantee that does not happen.
You’re thinking of the laws about parking as a way to make things run efficiently. They are thinking of them as a way to raise money. Which interpretation is the traffic court (whose salaries probably come from the money raised) likely to fall in with?
You should pay the $35 and count it as a cheap lesson. The cost of ignoring this will almost certainly exceed the fine, perhaps by many times.
FWIW, here’s my parking ticket story. I’ve never had one in a state I didn’t live in, though.
The Gilman Drive information booth at UCSD features two distinct ways of buying a temporary parking permit: (a) park in the 10-minute space there and walk up to the window to buy a permit, or (b) pull up on the curb and buy a permit from the machine, which you can reach from inside your car. A couple of years back I spent a lot of time at UCSD and always came via Gilman Drive. I usually chose option A, going up to the window, but one night I was in a hurry so I chose option B, buying a pass from the machine.
Well, they’re two distinct kinds of passes. The kind of permit you get from the window has a detailed list on the back listing the rules about which spaces you can park in and which ones you can’t. The permit from the machine has a shorter list which appears to be the complete list. I didn’t memorize all of the rules, so when I got the machine permit I had no idea that some of the regulations about spaces one couldn’t park in were omitted from it. After finding a suitable parking lot, and then finding only “red A” spaces open, I proceeded to carefully read the rules on the back of the permit, saw nothing regarding red A spaces and parked there. I got a ticket, went on the campus police website, sent a complaint and had the ticket cancelled and dues forgiven. I have no idea whether or not the machine there still sells incomplete parking passes, but the lesson here for you, a Texas driver with a New Mexico parking ticket, is that the UCSD police department is pretty fair about parking tickets. For whatever that’s worth.
FWIW (and IANAL), I believe that in English parking enforcement law, you can’t use a loading area just to pick up a small package from a shop. If the thing you were collecting was large/heavy/difficult to carry/needed you to park close by for security reasons, or some such, you’d have a much stronger case.
FWIW, “a friend” recieved a speeding ticket for going 100 mph around Nashvile Tennesse when he was driving through it in the year 2000. The cop took forever to come back to his car, told him that Canada and Tennesse had a reciprocity agreement, so here was the ticket he didn’t have to pay it now. This ticket was 300US, he was in university at the time, and no way he could afford it. This was when cdn was worth about 0.66, so big fine. He have never paid this ticket, he has renewed “his” licence since then, he has been to traffic court since. Zero repercussions.
The parking ticket is a violation charged to the vehicle, not the driver. In most places it’s a municipal ordinance thing, not a traffic court thing. In other words, if you are not going to be in Santa Fe again in that car, don’t worry. (I’m not saying don’t pay it, but I’m saying it won’t hurt if you don’t pay it.) They can’t come into Texas and track you down and drag you off to jail. It has nothing to do with your driver’s license. They might be able to add some fees onto your registration next time but unless Texas has gotten a lot meaner since I lived there I wouldn’t bet on that. My guess is that your letter will probably work.
OTOH if not, and you don’t pay it, when you drive this car back to Santa Fe you are going to be on the meter maid’s short list.
Parking tickets and speeding tickets are, for the most part, separate and distinct categories of things. Parking tickets are a violation of a municiple ordinance, usually, and are not criminal violations. They are handled civilly, the same as, say, a debt or the fine you pay for failing to turn in a library book on time. Speeding tickets for the most part (Nevada and some other situations excepted), are criminal violations, albeit very minor ones. Your rights in each case will be different. It would be interesting to find out if the OP’s ticket was a violation of a state vehicle code law (such as parking in a handicapped spot is), or violation of some municiple ordinance, because how Texas and New Mexico will handle the situation likely depends upon this fact.
In any event, there would be a completely different handling of the situation between any state of the United States and the various provincial governments of Canada. After all, it isn’t part of the U.S. Yet. So there wouldn’t be any reciprocity because these aren’t co-equal political entities. To the extent there is a “debt” owed to a city or county in the United States, that debt, if properly followed up on, could be taken to Canadian courts for enforcement on principles of comity, at best. To the extent there is a criminal involvement (which there could be in the case of speeding), the result would have to be a request to Canada to extradite the person to the appropriate state for prosecution; Canada can’t prosecute you for violation of American laws.
These two notes are horribly brief, quite summary, don’t go into the various exceptions that are probably irrelevant, and are not intended to spark a side debate.
I would be surprised if a parking ticket violation was reported to another state. In California, parking tickets are civil violations. If you wish to contest a parking ticket in California, you have to find the agency that handed it out and then find their appeals process. In most cases, this is somebody on the phone in City Hall. It’s almost never the police department. In the City of Los Angeles, parking tickets are handed out by the Department of Transportation. If you don’t agree with the ticket, you track down that office and you usually write something out. They only hold hearings in unusual circumstances. If you still don’t get satisfaction, you can go to Municipal Court.
