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As the Free Press has reported, the 36th District Court is waiving the late fees on all tickets 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. today and tomorrow.
Those fees add up, and can make it so much more difficult to pay off everything at once. What's more, should you not pay the tickets and late fees, you'll likely find your license suspended or your car booted and towed away. (Then your car is essentially held ransom, with special charges for towing and storing your car.)
I always pay my tickets on time these days, especially moving violations, but parking tickets too. Except for that one time when I lived on Willis Street near the Lodge. It's a narrow street that was often parked up, making it impossible to turn my car around. In order to park legally on this two-way street, I would have to drive two blocks out of my way. But since I often drive into the little neighborhood from the east at night, I'd pull onto my street and park my car with the left wheels against the curb. And I'd come out in the morning to find I'd received a ticket. This happened about a half-dozen times, and I'm sure the civil servant got a real kick out of menacing me for this blatant, dangerous, and willful violation of the law.
Yeah, I'm going to complain about it — at least a little. Anybody would. You live in a city that is unable to keep the streetlights working, is unable to stem the tide of murders and violent crime, and yet, like clockwork, any time you park your car facing the wrong direction, you can expect the same stern enforcement you would in a narrow-assed suburb. Jesus, my car has the wrong wheels against the curb on a two-way street. I clearly need to be ticketed. (That guy who murdered a bunch of people? We'll get to him when we can. Maybe.)
Anyway, I never paid the tickets. I was too poor to do it then, and I stopped receiving them in the mail after I moved. By the time I was making enough money to pay them, I'd forgotten all about them. Until I came out of a Chinese restaurant and saw a boot on my car.
By the time I got my car back, I'd paid more than $600 in fines, late fees, towing, storage, and other costs.
So if you have any outstanding parking tickets, now's the time to get down to the court and pay them. They'll even take credit cards, and it's probably worth it to charge it, especially when you can pay pennies on the dollar in some instances.
The 36th District Court accepts cash, credit card, money orders, and checks, at 421 Madison Ave., Detroit.
