Meter-Made
Toronto, ON
Female, 30
I currently work as a Parking Enforcement Officer in the wonderful city of Toronto. I am feared, and loathed by all. I may not work in your particular city, but I'm positive that I can help give you a better understanding of what Meter Maids do. I am knowledgeable in all parking matters so ask me anything.
Like I mentioned before, if I haven't served the ticket to your car I more than likely will let you go (unless you have parked outrageously). There's not a specific thing you can say to me that will make me want to take the ticket back for you, but it always helps when you are respectful. Also, if you have a valid excuse like running someone into the emergency room at the hospital etc., the chances of you avoiding a ticket are good. I also appreciate it when people admit their guilt instead of focusing on how I have somehow wronged them. It is also important to note that it is up to the individual officers discretion to take a ticket back or not. What works for one parking officer may not work for another.
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I'm sure that there is a parking officer out there that works that way, but for the majority of us we don't see the make or model of a car, we just see a parking violation. Anything with a license plate is fine to tag by my standards. I will admit, however, that I don't feel as bad ticketing a higher end car because I know these individuals have more disposable income than those driving lower end cars.
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The funny thing is meter maids don't have anything to do with the actual pay machines. We are only there to enforce the parking bylaws.Traditional parking meters are very rare now, and only a handful still exist in Toronto. The main pay system we deal with are "pay and display" machines, where you purchase time with change or a credit card and display the receipt on your dashboard. The city is in charge of the machines and their maintenance. A lot of cities are turning to electronic forms of payment, so I'm sure every major city will eventually go that route.
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Every day varies for a meter maid, and the time of year also makes a huge difference for us. The number of tickets written in the summer is probably higher than a day in the winter. This is because more people are driving, there are more events going on and a lot more tourists. Weekends can also be more lucrative for us because there tends to be more going on around the city. It's very hard to estimate the daily revenue from the tickets we write, and there are a number of reasons why: some people don't pay their tickets until they go to renew their plates, some choose to take their tickets to court, and furthermore some ticket's get withdrawn. The amount of revenue we make on an annual basis actually gets published for everyone to see. In 2011 it was estimated somewhere in the millions. I don't remember the exact amount but I will look into it further and report back to you.
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There's not too much I can do except place the ticket on the windshield. Car alarms go off all the time. People even intentionally set off their alarms in order to scare us, and or show that they are coming back to their vehicle. If an alarm does happen to go off based on the fact that I am placing a ticket on it, I go on my way and hope that the alarm will eventually turn itself off.
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Your tax paying dollars don't actually pay for our salaries. We pay our own salaries with the revenue we make from issuing parking tickets.
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The use of a boot is not legal in the city of Toronto. There have been instances where private security companies have used them on private property, but they are currently under investigation and/or facing charges. I think the main use of the boot is to collect fines from those individuals who continuously park illegally and leave their tickets unpaid. I can't really answer your question about emergency situations because I not familiar with the procedures involved with booting a vehicle.
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