The solution came quickly.

On Tuesday morning, Bill Wiles, Markham’s bylaw manager, stopped by at Jeffrey Burke and Pamela Defino’s home on Saffron St., carefully looked at their car parked perpendicular to the street, between the sidewalk and the road, a bit of the bumper sticking out, and said he would tolerate that.

Just that, not more.

“As long as it’s not a big car, like a pickup truck, and the four tires are on the driveway, even if some portion is sticking into the street, we’ll be fine,” said Wiles. “We are willing to be a bit tolerant here.”

But if the couple park any other way, the yellow tickets will be back under windshield wipers, he said. And the couple still has to pay the accumulated fines.

A story about the Markham couple’s parking problems in Tuesday’s Star ignited a maelstrom of reaction from readers.

Burke and Defino have racked up 600-plus parking tickets over the past six years, totalling, they say, about $25,000. The tickets have been written up for eight different vehicles and nine different licence plates.

The couple and their toddler daughter, Vasilika, live in a detached home in north Markham. Their one-car garage home has a small driveway, across which passes a sidewalk, set back from the street.

Burke says he can park his truck, a GMC Sierra, between the garage door and the sidewalk but there’s no place for his wife’s car, a BMW SUV. The garage is full of construction equipment, he said, and anyway it would be difficult to park the SUV inside it.

That, he said, leaves them no choice but to park the SUV in the short stretch of driveway between the sidewalk and street. “The tires are still on the driveway ... maybe the bumper sticks out a bit.” He maintains the situation, though awkward, doesn’t interfere with traffic.

“We don’t know what to do,” said Burke, who is in the construction business. There is no overnight street parking allowed in their neighbourhood, he said.

They say they have explored every alternative, including buying a smaller car. The fines keep coming.

He told the Star over the weekend he feels he and his wife are being targetted by the town.

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That is not true, says Wiles. The bylaw requires residents not to park in such a way as to obstruct the sidewalk or street, he said. If the vehicle’s tires are touching either, there is a good chance of a fine. Parking enforcement officers have taken photographs most times when they have ticketed a car parked incorrectly outside the couple’s home.

“There is evidence of blatant violation where the car was sticking out way too much into the street,” said Wiles. “Yes, it is their driveway, but the street isn’t,” he said.