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Bykofsky: No escape from Parking Authority ticket Nazis

I'M SURE - pretty sure, anyway - there are good, smart, maybe even nice people employed by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, but the rest are banging the agency harder than Joe Frazier.

I'M SURE - pretty sure, anyway - there are good, smart, maybe even nice people employed by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, but the rest are banging the agency harder than Joe Frazier.

Given the bad press rung up by the PPA in the past few weeks - Good Samaritan George Echenhofer ticketed when he stopped (flashers on) to render aid to a woman hit by a car; Jon Gundersen suffering anti-gay slurs from a (now suspended) PPA enforcement officer - Rick Slowicki's story isn't truly grotesque.

But it may be more symptomatic of what goes on in the wee brains of some ticket-writers, seized by arrogance, pettiness or thick-headed stupidity. Many need better training, an attitude adjustment, or both.

Slowicki, 43, got ticketed for parking his SUV "directly on the crosswalk" in the 700 block of N. Judson Street in the Art Museum area. He sent me a picture showing he was parked on the stop bar, but not in the crosswalk.

Not the same thing.

Says who?

Streets Department record custodian Scott Helms took the trouble to send Slowicki a letter saying "the stop bar and crosswalks are two separate street markings." Slowicki, who has past battles with PPA, was wrongly ticketed in a spot used for years by neighborhood residents.

"This is just another case of the PPA making up the rules as they go along," groused Slowicki, president of Nonstop Couriers, which has had its company vehicles ticketed in loading zones, and whose personal Vespa scooter caught tickets because of murky parking rules, about which I have written in the past.

Slowicki called a PPA supervisor who said there was nothing he could do but schedule a hearing and would talk to the officer, A. Dintino, who wrote the ticket.

"Once again," Slowicki says, "it's up to the citizens to take the loss and let the PPA work on the mistake after the fact."

Because some people lose pay if they take off time from work to fight a ticket, they find it cheaper to just shut up and pay up, even though they were wronged.

That's not fair.

PPA spokeswoman Linda Miller told me it "does not have jurisdiction" over stop bars, but tickets crosswalks because that's a safety issue. If you believe Slowicki, and I do, he wasn't in the crosswalk. Maybe ticket-writer A. Dintino didn't know the difference.


 
I have tackled the PPA in the past and recently (including today) my colleague Ronnie Polaneczky has been teeing off on it.

The two brutalities mentioned earlier were her reporting.

Rather than just bitch, Ronnie had proposed a five-point plan for making PPA more accountable and customer friendly.

Since PPA has not responded to her, I'm putting them out there again, even if I don't agree with it all. Here are Ronnie's Rules:

1 Cancel the contract PPA has with A&E to produce "Parking Wars." To me, that's a side issue.

2 Triple the number of customer-service reps, currently four. Hire as many as are needed.

3 Start evening hours for hearings. Daily hours from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. isn't good enough. Give the accused citizen the option of all-day Saturday hours and weekday evening hours.

4 Open a hotline so blatantly bad tickets can be dismissed over the phone.

5 Publish phone numbers and e-mail addresses of PPA board members, so citizens can contact them directly with problems and complaints.

PPA's answer thus far has been the sound of crickets.

Some response is required.

Email stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. See Stu on Facebook. For recent columns:

www.philly.com/Byko.