Leo (July 23 — Aug. 22)
It is only when you are confronted by a big challenge that you learn what you are capable of. You also, admittedly, get to make a very clear discovery about what you are intimidated by. You've learned much. Success awaits you.
Pisces (Feb. 20 — March 20)
Not only are you having a tense time trying to communicate with someone, you are struggling to keep your head above water financially. You don't deserve the hassle you are getting Try to relax. It won't be long before the good times come rolling in.
Gemini (May 21 — June 21)
Pessimists, in all shapes and sizes, are proclaiming messages of doom and destruction. There must be a factory somewhere churning them out. Don't let their motto become yours. Stay positive and you'll be blessed by friendly events.
Read Phil Booth at boothstars.com or at thestar.com/horoscope.
Staff Reporter
Anyone who receives a $30 Toronto parking ticket can almost certainly dodge the fine by applying for a court date.
Since the start of 2006, figures provided by Toronto's court services show it accepted about 250,000 requests from drivers to contest a $30 parking ticket, but trial dates were issued for only about 4,300. In 2008, drivers have so far requested more than 37,000 trials for $30 parking tickets, but no court dates have been issued.
Court services, which schedules trials for everything from speeding tickets and workplace safety violations to municipal bylaw infractions, says a chronic shortage of courtrooms and justices of the peace, who serve as judges in parking ticket trials, has forced it to "prioritize" cases that make it to court.
With about 600,000 charges heard annually in city courts, the enormous number of trial requests for $30 tickets – the most frequently issued ticket, usually for overtime parking – is a "pretty low" priority, says court services director Barry Randell.
When drivers exercise their legal right to fight a parking ticket, they must go to one of four city offices, where a clerk accepts the request for a trial and provides confirmation on paper that a court date will be mailed to them.
But for several years, notices of trial have been issued for only a tiny fraction of $30 ticket requests.
"It's the dirty little secret city hall doesn't want people to know," says private investigator Derek Snowdy, who's run up more than 200 applications for trials he is convinced will never happen.
While he has avoided the fines, Snowdy said it is "dishonest" of the city to lead people to believe they'll get their day in court, when it has stopped holding trials for $30 tickets.
"If you're not giving court dates, you're not being legitimate with issuing the tickets. The tickets are disingenuous."
The outstanding requests are still "scheduled for court," said Randell, maintaining drivers could be mailed a trial date, even though the backlog continues to grow and exceeds the capacity of city courts to hear them.
"My job is to take a look at all the tickets that have to go to court in Toronto ... to look at making sure the more serious cases have the court time they need to go through the system," he said.
"Where courtrooms have been closed because there were no justices of the peace appointed by the province, we had to take a look at reorganizing the court system and the types of cases that go into each courtroom."
As many as six of Toronto's 23 municipal courts have been unavailable since 2004 for various reasons, including a shortage of justices of the peace, he said.
Each courtroom can handle about 25,000 charges a year, said Randell, which meant the capacity to hold trials was cut by 150,000 – about 25 per cent of total charges – whenever six courtrooms were out of service.
"You look at the numbers and you can start to understand why we have a backlog."
The Fixer has been poking into parking issues for months, which resulted in a meeting with Snowdy, who works on contract for parking operators and knows a lot about the business.
Over lunch, he produced a thick stack of yellow papers, saying they were acknowledgements from the city of requests for trials of $30 tickets. He said there were 50 to 60 in the pile, to go along with the others he's accumulated since figuring out the loophole in 2006.
"I park just about anywhere I want, because I know that as long as the ticket is for $30 and I'm willing to apply for a court date, I won't have to pay," he said.
Once a week, Snowdy said he or one of the people who work for him takes the tickets to Metro Hall or one of three other locations where requests for trials are processed.
When he first started asking around about it, he said a city hall staffer and a Toronto police official took him aside and said, "Don't dig on this any farther, court dates aren't being issued, it's not for public consumption," and that he was to "keep quiet."
He says he was told it was a cost-saving measure, but refused to name the police officer or city hall staffer.
The motivation for not holding trials isn't limited to a lack of court space and officials, said Snowdy, noting that record numbers of parking tickets issued over the past two years have netted the city an even bigger revenue boost due to greatly reduced trial costs. Last year the city collected $79 million from parking tickets.
When asked if it was likely that drivers who requested court dates for tickets issued several years ago might still get a trial, Randell said: "That's certainly a question the prosecutor might want to answer. I'm only going to respond to what they want to do, so it's their call whether they want to put it in court."
On Randell's advice, we asked George Bartlett, director of prosecutions with Toronto's legal services division, if people who applied for court dates in 2007 or earlier might still get a trial.
"I really don't know," said Bartlett. "I don't control the issue of notices of trial, obviously. I respond more to the other party, when it gets to court. The defendant is there and the prosecution is there, and we deal with the matters that get on the court list. We don't determine what gets on the court list."
We asked Bartlett if the charges might simply disappear, given the difficulties in holding so many trials, as well as delays in providing them in a reasonable length of time.
"No, charges don't disappear on their own," said Bartlett, adding there's a process for people who want to argue that they've been denied the right to a speedy trial.
"If a person feels that their charter rights – and that's what we'd be dealing with here – have been violated, they'd have to follow procedure and give notice to the prosecutor and to the attorney-general of the province, and of Canada ... and the court deals with that application."
But the notion of holding trials at some point in the future for $30 tickets issued two or three years ago raises serious questions, said Randell. "There's the whole issue around, `Is it the best use of court space?' Where are these people now at this point in their lives? Where are the officers who wrote these tickets?"
Drivers who are unlikely to ever be tried will not be disappointed they weren't convicted and fined, but is it honest for the city to maintain that they could still end up in court?
What's broken in your neighbourhood? We want to know. To email us, go to www.thestar.com/thefixer and click on the submit a problem link. Or call us at 416-869-4823.
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