Mad About Your Parking Ticket? It's Just Business

Parking is big business in New Canaan. But with a shrinking staff and one of three patrol officers at home with a broken leg, parking revenues are beginning to slide and an already difficult job is getting even tougher.

"We are very short staffed in this office," Assistant Administrator Stacey Miltenberg said.   

In 2008, the Town of New Canaan employed four parking patrol officers and pulled nearly $1.1 million from parking permits, tickets and meters. In 2009, the same year the Parking Department laid off one of their officers, revenues slid to under $1 million.

The majority of parking revenues are generated from parking permits, which are in such high demand there is a six-year waiting period for the lumberyard lot, according to the Parking Bureau. Roughly 25 percent of the takings are from parking tickets, which are often difficult to collect.

"People feel indignant about parking tickets after spending so much on shopping in town," Miltenberg said. "We're happy [people] come to town, but we have to enforce the regulations."

Parking Enforcement Coordinator Haven Requa spends his days patrolling the parking lots of New Canaan. In the summer, he's outside so often he covers his shaved head and ears with SPF 70 sun block and still gets burnt. Yet, scorched skin is the least of his worries.

"It's amazing how people go from nice and pleasant to swearing at you," Requa said. "If I don't get called an [expletive] once a day, I'm not doing my job."

According to the Parking Bureau, the biggest parking scofflaws aren't out-of-towners, they're storeowners.

"The employees of the shops are a very big part of the parking problem," Miltenberg said. "You want to save parking spaces for shoppers…  A lot of repeat offenders are employees of the stores, not so much the shoppers coming in."

And for those offenders who don't take tickets seriously, they can expect a swift boot to the tires. After the fifth unpaid parking ticket, the Parking Bureau immobilizes the offender's car, according to Requa.  

While the New Canaan Parking Bureau certainly takes their job seriously, they still consider themselves reasonable people.

"We are probably the easiest parking department to come into," Miltenberg said. "A lot of other parking departments don't want walk-ins… We're accessible."

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Sheryl Shaker contributed the reporting for this article.