Q: I received a $25 ticket at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts parking garage for taking up more than one space. I paid $10 to park. Shouldn’t the ticket be for another $10 only?— Mark Tiernan, Denver
A: Although the DCPA is a city- owned institution, the parking garage is operated by a private concessionaire.
The operator, Standard Parking Systems, has a contract with the city to run the garage and, in addition to sharing the revenues with the city — keeping some amount of profit for itself, of course — the contract dictates how parking fines are assessed and collected. The city gets that revenue too.
Private parking lot tickets have been a sore spot for Denver consumers for quite some time, with citation envelopes designed to look like a city-issued ticket.
The problem consumers face is the unfounded belief that a ticket issued by a private parking lot owner is not a real citation. It isn’t in the street-ticket sense. It’s not City Hall you’re fighting, it’s the owner of the lot.
By not paying, however, you will eventually face a collection-agency bill. Many parking-lot owners simply turn over the unpaid tickets to debt collectors, which can hurt your credit if ignored.
Parking on a lot is an agreement to abide by the owner’s rules, including the cost of the space. One space.
There’s little difference with Standard as the keeper of the city lot. It’s $10 to park on event nights. But while your logic — another $10 fine to occupy a second spot — seems sound, the reality falls on the economics of how the parking business is run.
Spots are “rolled,” or reused, a number of times a day. The idea behind the $25 ticket is to recoup potentially lost revenue for preventing someone from parking.
And the folks at the city’s Public Works Department tell me the fine is in line with city-issued tickets for meter violations on the street.
You can appeal the ticket, of course, citing the disparate fee. It’s worth a try.
