41st Ward Senior Citizen Treated Unjustly by the City: Where are the elected officials?

So, a 41st Ward Tax-Paying 75 year old Senior Citizen is told she must prove the city sticker she bought and paid, for on time, was on her windshield.  Ms. Tamayo received a ticket for no city sticker in error.  She appealed at a hearing, and brought proof, she bought her city sticker on time.  But, somehow that isn't enough these days, as Ms. Tomayo was told the onus is on her to prove the sticker was on her car at the time the ticket was issued.  She had to pay $200! On a Senior Citizen fixed income! What nonsense this is.  The article makes reference to a trip to the alderman's office.  I have to assume that was useless, as the story ended up in the Sun-times today.




Hard to fight City Hall when fight isn’t fair

By MARY MITCHELL January 8, 2014 6:46PM

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Updated: January 9, 2014 2:22AM

So you walk outside of your home and see a ticket on your car for failing to display a city vehicle sticker, only the sticker is clearly visible.

Most young people would likely grab a cellphone and photograph the sticker along with the ticket.

 

But senior citizens like Gladys Tamayo, 75, still think they can tell their stories and someone will listen and hear the truth.

Tamayo has lived in Chicago since 1966 — first in the Wrigley area and now in the Norwood Park community. Her voice mail message greets callers in both Spanish and English.

“My car was in front of the house and had a valid city sticker,” Tamayo told me. “When the ticket was issued by the city, I said this is wrong.”

Tamayo followed the procedure for appealing the ticket, first requesting a hearing and then showing up at 2550 W. Addison, one of the locations where these revenue cases are heard.

 

She accepts that she probably got off on the wrong foot with the administrative law officer, Lonathan D. Hurse, when she mistakenly walked behind the podium instead of standing in front of it.

Attempts to reach Hurse about Tamayo’s hearing were unsuccessful.

“I was a little nervous,” she admits.

“He read something about the law and said I didn’t have a city sticker on the car. But that is a lie,” she said.

Tamayo said she brought along a copy of the check she wrote for the sticker, but the judge said she had to prove directly that she had the sticker on the windshield before she got the ticket.

“I thought, you’ve got to be kidding. How can I prove that?” she asked.

According to the Municipal Code of Chicago, violations involving the display of the city sticker are excluded from defenses covering other parking violations.

In the end, Tamayo was ordered to pay $200 in fines.

“I was really upset. You are robbing me if you order me to pay for something I didn’t do because a lazy employee didn’t do the job,” Tamayo said.

“They should have seen the sticker. Maybe they drove by and didn’t see it. I don’t know,” she said.

In a city plagued by potholes and senseless crime, a 75-year-old woman’s complaint about a wrongful ticket might seem like a trivial thing.

And as a spokesman for the city of Chicago told me, Chicago police officers and city workers have “bigger fish to fry.”

But no one has $200 to throw away.

Given that this senior citizen made the effort to show up and defend herself by presenting her receipts for the sticker, the administrative officer was a bit harsh.

Moreover, we all make mistakes.

But under these circumstances, Tamayo had no way to prove the sticker was on the windshield at the time the officer or city employee wrote the ticket.

That doesn’t sit well with her, and frankly, wouldn’t sit well with anyone who lands in this situation.

Last week, she trekked up to her alderman’s office with her documents hoping to raise awareness about what she considers an unfair situation.

“That is what really gets me. I have to prove something I cannot prove,” she said.

Now Tamayo is on a crusade.

“I am not really upset about the $200. It is the principle involved. I need to let people know from now on they should take photographs of the sticker the moment they put it on their windshield,” she said.

You’ve got to like Tamayo’s spunk.

In fact, she may have just the right message to convince seniors they need to get one of those new-fangled phones.

Email: marym@suntimes.com