Charlottesville is now officially a less cool place to live for those who laugh in the face of parking regulations. A loophole that essentially doled out no punishment for unpaid parking tickets has been closed, following an October 2 City Council vote that remedied the glitch.
Under the old procedure, appealed tickets would get forwarded to the General District Court for a trial. But the court took no action against individuals who didn’t appear in court, and the tickets got filed away in the clerk’s office with “no disposition whatsoever,” according to City documents. To which we can only reply: Awesome! Why would an oversight so beneficial to your average, desperate parking-hunter possibly need altering?
Apparently a parking free-for-all is in no one’s best interest. City documents say a few chronic violators have figured out the loophole and “never have to pay a parking ticket as long as they never show for their court date.” We can see the injustice; they should experience the day-ruining trip to the City Treasurer’s Office just like everyone else.
The City is remedying the situation by informing citizens on their tickets that if they appeal and don’t show, they’ll be tried in their absence. There’s no habitual parking offender registry, but our guess is some of those vehicular ne’er-do-wells may just pick up and move to another loophole.—Meg McEvoy
