Students may get more time to think up a good excuse when contesting city parking tickets.
If the City of Gainesville decides to pass a change in the code of ordinances at today's City Commission meeting at 1 p.m. in City Hall, drivers will have more time to respond to a denied parking ticket petition.
Under the revised section of Appendix A of the ordinances, a person would have four additional work days to respond to a denial of his or her original appeal.
Previously, the response time included weekends and holidays.
The City proposed to increase the response time after a citizen wrote a letter saying that by the time they received the instructions to appeal, the response time had run out, said Ronald Combs, senior assistant city attorney.
One UF student believes that people appeal parking tickets because it is hard to find authorized parking in the city.
"The way they made Gainesville, there isn't much space for parking, especially in the downtown area around UF," said Chris Hillhouse, a UF student.
According to Combs the only five acceptable reasons to appeal a parking citation are:
l A malfunctioning meter
l A valid or verifiable emergency
l If he or she is a government employee or official on official business, which allows them to violate the time limit, park in unauthorized parking, etc.
l If he or she is a city volunteer who was detained because of their duties
l If there was an error in the issuance of the citation
Although a majority of people reply within the time limits, said Combs, the City decided to rid people of a "disadvantage" they might have by excluding weekends and holidays.
Some people's reasons for appealing a parking ticket include "there was no sign posted at my parking spot" and "the meter wasn't working."
"I had to turn a paper in to the professor by 12 and had no place else to park" is not an acceptable reason to appeal a parking citation, Combs said.
