Dante described Hell as levels befitting your Earthly sins. The Baltimore City Parking Fines Department has just as many levels for your parking faux pas. First you have the nice level of parking fine hell. Your meter expired while you were purchasing that must have Natty Boh bumper sticker. That will cost you a mere $23. This sin would be the equivalent to say, chronically cussing in front of small children. You may just spend eternity having to watch reruns of "Full House."
The middle levels of hell are in your $40 to $77 range of punishment. You can be sent here for being less than 15' from a fire hydrant, in a snow emergency route, or, my favorite, impeding the flow of traffic. My boyfriend B had been impeding the flow of traffic on our exceedingly busy side street of upper Fell's from 7-8 pm for weeks; unable to find a parking spot at this time for all the potential ones banned by "7:07pm to 9:21pm on every third Monday and Thursday, excluding Arbor Day but not Flag Day and including half moons even if those are on days not normally excluded" types of restrictions. And what was he impeding on the day he finally received judgment for his sin? The Ice Cream Truck. Where's the fine for their impeding my ability to sleep at night? And who needs ice cream at 1am anyway?
The deeper level of hell, for the truly heinous parking restriction offenders, will get you anywhere from $152 to $302. The usual sins here are parking in a handicapped spot, abandoning "your" vehicle, and driving your 20,000 lbs. commercial vehicle in the neighborhoods. But unless we just have it out for the crippled or are off loading 1 million cans of corn in our rowhouse; we're pretty free of these sins.
But what you may not know about is the deepest level of hell. The punishment is so intense that the City won't put it in writing. (They know what happened to tobacco companies for putting diabolical schemes in writing.)The deepest level of parking fine hell is what I like to call the circular reasoning violation. A "friend" of mine realized one day that she had inadvertently let her tags expire. Not so much realized, but was ticketed. A beginner level of hell costing her just $27. I, I mean she, went online to renew her tags. After paying the city fee (different from the parking fee) for letting her tags expire, she thought that would clear her to renew her tags. Nope, must first pay all outstanding parking tickets. The only one she had was the one she just received. Bad news, can't pay parking tickets online through this site. She called the 1-800, paid the ticket and obligatory $14 convenience fee. Only after paying did the operator announce it would take 30 convenient days to process the phone payment. For the next few weeks despite dodging meter maids, police, etc., she amassed four more "expired tag" violations. You do the math. This time she sent checks in to avoid the convenience of the phone. All in all, she has still been unable to renew her tags because of processing delays. She probably has another measly $27 ticket right now.
Please sir may I have another?
