Philip Ball committed an act of defiance against City Hall Monday morning: He parked his Saab by an hourly meter outside his Elm Street law office. After receiving at least 40 tickets over two years, Ball has taken the city to court to challenge its interpretation of the law governing parking for people with disabilities — people like him.
Ball helped write that law. He argued that it allows people with handicapped permits to park all day at hourly meters on downtown streets without continually having to put in coins.
He filed suit against the city charging that the city’s practice of continuing to ticket his car — and of denying him a right to a hearing to challenge the tickets — violates state law as well as the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
This is the latest round in a fight that dates back to the 1970s.
Ball — who was born with cerebral palsy when a lack of oxygen killed some of the motor cells in his brain — works on the second floor of 51 Elm St. He has trouble walking. The city had no spaces available for him in government-owned lots within a block or two of his office. So he parks on Elm Street, throws coins into the meter, then leaves the car there for the day. At least once a month on average, he gets a ticket for parking at an expired meter. He complains to the city’s traffic office, but no longer gets to speak to the man in charge of tickets, Charles Walonis. He has requested hearings (as tickets suggest that people do if they want to contest) since 1998, but hasn’t received one.
“It took me a long time to do this,” Ball said Monday morning. “I really tried to work within the system.”
City parking chief Paul Wessel said the city is within its rights to ticket Ball. “We get a lot of requests for hearings,” he said. “The first step is to deal with it administratively. The goal of on-street parking is not to be all-day parking, but to have space for people to patronize restaurants and local businesses.”
Is Silence “Permissive”?
At issue is Section 14 – 253a (e) of the state General Statutes. It reads: “Vehicles displaying a special license plate or a removable windshield placard issued pursuant to this section or by authorities of other states or countries for the purpose of identifying vehicles permitted to utilize parking spaces reserved for persons with disabilities which limit or impair their ability to walk or blind persons, shall be allowed to park in an area where parking is legally permissible, for an unlimited period of time without penalty, notwithstanding the period of time indicated as lawful by any (1) parking meter, or (2) sign erected and maintained in accordance with the provisions of chapter 249.”
To Ball, the meaning of that passage is clear: Handicapped people can park at the meter. The meter can run out. And the car can stay there.
That’s what the clear intention was, Ball added, when he and other disability rights activists wrote that section, which state legislators passed in 1976.
Paul Wessel agreed that the law allows handicapped people to stay at the spot without returning to feed the meter. The law doesn’t say anything specific about parking for free all day. While Ball may interpret that as meaning the city can’t charge, the city sees that “silence” as “permissive,” Wessel said. That means the city felt it could legally require handicapped parkers to buy 12-hour vouchers to put on their cars. The vouchers cost $4 a day.
Wessel pointed to two documents to back up his argument.
One is a flyer entitled “Handicapped Parking Questions & Answers” written by the State Office of Protection and Advocacy for Handicapped Persons. It tells drivers with handicapped parking permits that “no penalties may be levied for overtime parking” in legal spaces. It adds: “You must, of course, put your money in the meter like everyone else!” (Ball does put money in the meter when he parks, although he disagrees with that interpretation of the law. He argued that that paragraph supports his position, and noted it says nothing about drivers have to continue to put in more money.)
Wesell also pointed to an e‑mail about the Ball lawsuit which he received from the city’s director of services for persons with disabilities, Michelle M. Duprey. In the memo, Duprey agreed that handicapped drivers may park beyond the one- or two-hour limit at meters. However, she argued that “they have to pay for the time… [T]he statute does not restrict a municipality from charging such a person for the time they park.”
“[P]eople with disabilities should have to pay like everyone else. The City does not wish to perpetuate the ‘charity’ stereotypes around disability,” Duprey wrote.
“If I thought I was trying to rip somebody off, I wouldn’t do it,” Ball replied. “I truly believe” the city is misinterpreting the statute. “I’m suing because I truly believe they are abridging the rights of all handicapped people.”
The head of the state Office of Protection and Advocacy for Handicapped Persons was out of the office Monday and unavailable for comment.
Round Two
Ball first went up against the city traffic department after a bureaucratic encounter that could have been scripted by Joseph Heller. That’s how Section 14 – 253a (e) was born.
Ball returned to his native New Haven in the early ’70s following a stint at Columbia University in New York. In New York, he never received tickets for expired meters thanks to his handicapped permit. In New Haven, he started receiving tickets.
He went to the Department of Motor Vehicles for a handicapped parking permit. He was directed to the state Veterans Administration. So he went there. The VA turned him down — because he wasn’t a veteran. Why wasn’t he a veteran? Because of his disability, the army labeled him 4F, unfit to serve.