Arlington County residents now will have to go to court if they want to challenge their parking tickets.
Instead of being able to mail in a protest, citizens will have to appear before the Arlington County General District Court.
Residents must ask for a court date in person at the police department. Those found guilty must pay a court cost of $61 in addition to the fine.
The three offices that used to handle parking tickets were eliminated because of budget cuts, said Diana Sun, spokeswoman at the County Manager’s Office.
“This was the most efficient way to give the public an opportunity to appeal their parking tickets,” said Arlington County police Sgt. Wayne Vincent.
The new system is time-consuming because people will have to make time to go to court — and will result in more people paying the tickets instead of fighting them, said Larry Mayer, president of the Arlington County Civic Federation. Mayer said he fought the proposal in April when the county board was working on the budget for fiscal 2009, which started in July.
“From a citizen’s perspective, this alteration doesn’t help. The process makes everything much more cumbersome, and what will end up happening is that more people will just pay the parking ticket because they don’t want to waste valuable time,” he said.
Residents will be able to appeal parking tickets that were issued before Nov. 15 through the Parking Review Office, police department officials said. They can send a written explanation by mail or drop one off at the Police Department Customer Service Counter.
Arlington County first began letting residents challenge their parking tickets online and by fax in October 2003. The charge for court costs if the challenger lost was $10.
