A citizen of the city of Mercier who received a ticket during a snow removal operation won his case, while the judge strongly criticized the “clearly insufficient and inappropriate” signage.
“When the City imposes itself to inform its population by all the means at its disposal, it cannot limit itself to new information technologies, as attractive and in vogue as they may be at present”, supported Judge Sylvain Dorais in a recent decision.
The citizen in question, Nikolay Kudrevatykh, contested a statement of offense for prohibited parking received last February.
That evening, there was then very little snow on the ground and the accumulated snow had already been picked up, according to what he saw.
He therefore deduced that it was possible to park.
“The court holds that it therefore had no reason to believe that a snow removal operation could be underway that evening,” said the magistrate.
For its part, the City had disseminated the information on its Facebook page as well as on its website, and by text messaging for subscribers to this service, which has only 800 subscribers out of a population of 14,000 citizens.
“Such a choice disadvantages people who do not have access to these technological means, either because of their limited financial means, their lack of interest in social networks or because they do not have sufficient knowledge to operate the devices. necessary to have access to it”, lamented the judge Dorais.
“By the way, posters remain a known and very effective means of informing the population of parking bans,” he added.
Consult citizens
Contacted by Le Journal, the City of Mercier indicated that it did not intend to contest the judgment and that it was mainly going to use it to improve its ways of doing things.
“This is an opportunity for us to take this as leverage. We will want to consult citizens to find the best ways to get the message across when there are snow removal operations,” said Caroline Nguyen Minh, director of communications and information technology.
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