Windsorites eager to fight their parking tickets will soon no longer have to go to court and argue before a judge to appeal their fines.
But in establishing a cheaper administrative penalty system to bypass the courts, the city is also implementing changes that might make it harder to fight those fines.
Parking bylaw enforcers will soon be equipped with hand-held devices that not only write up tickets but also record and file photos of the offending vehicle, its licence plate and the traffic sign that was purportedly ignored.
“The biggest change is you don’t go to court,” said deputy city solicitor Wira Vendrasco. “You can still dispute your ticket, but instead of court, you appear before a hearing officer,” she added.
Not only is the new system expected to be cheaper for all parties, it’s also intended to address continuing backlogs and free up the court’s time for more hefty legal matters.
“This takes a lot of pressure off provincial court — the court should be dealing with issues that are a little more serious,” said Vendrasco, adding Windsor is playing catch-up to how it’s done in bigger cities already, like Toronto and Oshawa.
The penalty structure will be unchanged, and the first avenue of any appeal, a complaint-hearing screening officer, remains the same. “Mistakes do happen,” said Vendrasco, in explaining how an initial complaint can sometimes bring immediate success.
Windsor’s provincial offences court currently sets aside one day a month to deal with such appeals, with up to 40 trials scheduled per date. At any given time, however, Vendrasco said about 140 owners of disputed tickets are awiting trial.
Last year, 91,000 tickets were issued by Windsor’s parking enforcers (84,951 in 2011), with 660 (556 in 2011) scheduled for trial.
A report on the necessary parking bylaw changes, including the anticipated start date, should be going before city council in July, with the new system expected to be operational by the beginning of September.
City council approved implementation of the new system in April, but municipal staff say “technical difficulties” with the new hardware and software has forced a delay in the initial July startup date. Vendrasco said there is very little required in the way of training for the commissionaires who enforce Windsor’s parking bylaw.
dschmidt@windsorstar.com or on Twitter: @schmidtcity
