----------------
This is an example of a protest letter for Midtown Brandywine residents. You should review the template before protesting a ticket which you have been wrongfully issued, or if you would like to dispute the reason for a ticket being issued. Submitting this letter, within the time for allowed for dispute specified on your ticket, will most likely result in the City of Wilmington Parking Appeals Division generating a form letter based upon the code violation you received a ticket for, if they process it correctly. However, the City has failed to generate these letters, resulting in ticket dismissal, in the past.
During the time for dispute, and prior to your receipt of the City’s response, all fees and penalties that would otherwise accrue are statutorily waived. Residents often find themselves unable to pay a ticket immediately in the time required, and this process will allow them to prepare to pay the ticket upon receipt of the City’s response, without suffering the additional increased penalties.
If you receive the City’s response, it will include a form that you may mail back if you wish to contest the ticket further, and request a Civil Administrative hearing held at the Justice of the Peace Court at 300 North Walnut Street. Please note that requesting a hearing may result in additional costs. However, upon receipt of the City’s response of your initial appeal, you will have the right to pay the initial ticket amount within the time specified.
I have prepared this letter pro bono as allowed by the laws of the State of Delaware for attorneys licensed out of state to provide free legal advice to pro se litigants, as an example to help navigate the civil legal system.
Neighborly Yours,
John A. Kirk, Esq.
Admitted in Pennsylvania
213 W.14th St.
Wilmington, DE 19801
DATE
City of Wilmington Delaware
Public Safety Division
ATTN: Civil Appeals Director
300 N. Walnut St., 2nd Floor
Wilmington, DE 19801
Dear Sir or Madam:
This correspondence is written notice to protest a parking citation I received in my neighborhood from the Wilmington Parking Division. The citation number is WMPXXXXXXXX.
- The Ticket was issued on DATE by Officer NAME, badge #BADGE at TIME OF TICKET. It was issued for code violation CODE for “w/in 20 ft of Crosswk(FILL IN WHATEVER YOUR CODE STATED REASON IS)”.
- REASON (IF ANY, ONLY “I PROTEST THIS TICKET” IS REQUIRED).
- If the violation cannot be rescinded then I request that a hearing be granted in the event that the initial decision of the Civil Appeals Director is not in favor of me, and that any further action be held until the resolution of such hearing has been duly rendered.
- I am including a copy of the violation, and have retained a copy and the original for my records in the event that a hearing is required.
V. If I do not hear back from the City, I will justifiably rely that the answer has been in my favor, and this letter will stand as the only documentation subsequent that I will need to show that I have properly availed myself of the channels for protestation of citations.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration, I look forward to hearing your response in the near future.
Very Truly Yours,
YOUR NAME
ADDRESS
Wilmington, DE 19801
I wish I had had this template when I filed my appeal last year. I just wrote explaining what happened. (I was helping my friend moved and parked in a 2 hour spot for 2 hours, then moved to a different 2 hour spot for another two hours, and still got a ticket.) After holding my appeal letter for two months, all they did was cite the section of the City Code that said that parking was limited to 2 hours. Nowhere did it explain how far the 2-hour zone extended or why the signs did not specify that the 2-hour restriction applied to all the spaces on the block (or for all I knew, all the spaces within the city limits). I have parked in Philly, Baltimore, New York, D.C., even Los Angeles, and I've never seen a city where you couldn't meet the requirement for a 2-hour restriction by moving your car to a different space.
ReplyDeleteI was doing some research on this last night. I read in the Wilmington city code that if you move your car you must move it to a different street AND a different block in order to consider your car legally moved. So for instance you cannot move your car to an empty spot across the street from where you have been parked, but it is legal to pull around the corner from your first spot and park there or to park on the other side of an intersection.
ReplyDeleteI was interested to read this because I have received a ticket despite the fact that I followed this procedure, though now it's too late to contest. I parked for less than an hour in the morning and then left the area for the day. In the late afternoon I came back and parked it for less than 5 minutes near where I had been parked hours earlier. I caught the officer in the act of writing me a ticket and was told I should have moved my car from the neighborhood entirely to avoid a ticket. She didn't believe me when I told her I had been gone all day.
Not only is it alarming that the one issuing the ticket had no idea of the law she was enforcing, but also that it was clear that she had not noted my car as gone from the area all day long. Where was she all day when she was being paid to check this spot each hour?
Anonymous 1 & 2 - I just got a call from the News Journal and they are working on a story about this issue - if you'd like to share your experience with the reporter, please shoot me an e-mail at ken.grant7@gmail.com
ReplyDelete