Author: Jana

I’d say that probably 3 or 4 times per year I get some type of parking citation for parking in a disabled parking stall–even with my properly displayed placard. It happened again this morning, only this time I was parked in the stall adjacent to the disabled parking stall because the stall was already taken by another car. Due to construction, there are only two disabled stalls for the entire Humanities area of UCI which has four mid-rise buildings of offices and dozens of classrooms. I got to campus at 8:55am and both spots were already taken. [I should note that there are 5 disabled stalls on the FAR end of this parking lot that are not close to ANY buildings (they are adjacent to an access road and a park). These stalls are so far away that they aren’t even visible from the pathway leading to the Humanities buildings. In the past when I’ve complained about the number of disabled stalls–suggesting that it may not be legal to have so few spaces, those out-of-the-way spaces have been pointed out to me. I don’t consider them accessible and I would suppose that no one else does either given that they are always empty.]

So I wrote a friendly email to the UCI Parking Office explaining the situation and asking that they stripe more stalls during the construction given that we are all struggling to use two stalls and many of us really _need_ the extra footprint of the larger stall to safely enter/exit our vehicles.

The only response I received was a terse email saying that I would have to go through the regular citation appeal process if I want to ‘contest’ my citation from this morning.

So I ask, is it logical that because I was mistakenly cited this morning that I have to go through the time and trouble to appeal this parking ticket? I mean, of course we all make mistakes and I try to have a good sense of humor about these types of inconveniences, but I’m just not feeling particularly patient today.
/whine