You Can Beat City Hall

A few posts back I mentioned a recent parking ticket I was lucky enough to receive. The Coles Notes version: still 1 hour left on the meter, ticket unfair, couldn't dispute ticket based on my vacation schedule colliding with city policy for disputes, paid the $15 fine with an accompanying 'cheeky' letter to the city.

Now that we're caught up..... upon sifting through the post-vacation mail, I found a letter from the city addressed to Yours Truly. First reaction; my letter's slightly sarcastic tone pissed off someone downtown. Upon opening the letter I found that my $15 cheque had been returned along with a letter explaining that the parking meter was faulty. Yup, apparently the city's crack meter technician checked things out and determined that the meter was faulty at the time of my alleged parking infraction. I'm a bit puzzled at how this jives with the fact that the meter still displayed 1 hour of time when Meter Reading Guy issued the ticket. I won't even comment on the time travel implications around determining how the meter was faulty at a precise moment in the past.

Logic aside, my ticket has been rescinded, I have my $15 back, and one more faulty meter has been restored to pristine time-keeping condition. It all feels pretty good to me.