Peter Bressert, a manager at Balzac, says that the volume of tickets issued in the parking lot behind the east side wine bar is so high that he has had employees quit over it. Credit: Mark Abramson

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Peter Bressert is a manager at Balzac wine bar off of Brady St. on Milwaukee's east side, where parking tickets seem to fall on windshields like leaves in autumn.

The volume of tickets written in the city parking lot behind Balzac is so high that Bressert said some of his employees have quit.

"They're ruthless over here," Bressert said.

In fact, the municipal lot behind the bar is the most ticketed spot in Milwaukee, a Journal Sentinel analysis of six months of Milwaukee parking ticket data shows.

From mid-December to mid-June, parking checkers wrote a whopping 2,062 tickets - just over 11 tickets a day - in the lot just north of Brady St. that spans from N. Arlington Place to N. Warren Ave.

Apollo Café and Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches also share a border with the lot.

Balzac bar goes through about $100 in quarters every week giving customers and employees coins to feed the meters, according to Bressert.

"We have to make an extra trip to the bank to go get quarters for people to plug their meters, and they're still getting tickets," he said.

All told, the City of Milwaukee generated $21 million from parking tickets in 2009. In the six-month period ending June 15, city parking checkers issued nearly 418,500 parking tickets.

Cindy Angelos, parking financial manager for the Department of Public Works, said parking enforcement is necessary in high-demand areas such as Brady St.

"The night time demand for spaces is very heavy due to both the restaurants and bars and the lack of off-street residential parking," Angelos said. "To permit the businesses to thrive, the lot, which was constructed primarily for them, requires turnover."

She said high-demand areas throughout the city necessitate turnover to sustain viable commercial business.

"If there were no restrictions, employees would fill the spaces and park the entire day, thereby leaving no room for customers, students, clients, etc.," Angelos said.

Motorists who parked near Milwaukee Area Technical College also got hit hard in the pocketbook, courtesy of the city parking checkers.

Parking checkers wrote nearly 1,700 tickets in the 1000 block of N. 9th St. just west of MATC - the second biggest hot spot for citations in the city in the period reviewed.

Including the other streets immediately surrounding the college, which shares thoroughfares with the Police Administration Building, the County Safety Building and the Bradley Center property, officers wrote a total of 5,729 tickets near the MATC campus.

On a recent Friday afternoon, a Milwaukee resident named William hustled to his SUV parked outside MATC after seeing parking enforcement drive by. But he was too late - a $22 ticket was left on his vehicle.

Preferring to give only his first name, William said he attended MATC for more than two years, specializing in human services, and he had been ticketed several times in the MATC area in the past. He now lives on the north side and works with troubled teens for a Milwaukee youth organization.

"I was only two minutes late," William told Public Investigator, pointing to his watch. "They seem to be very aggressive."

Most cited campus - MU

But MATC wasn't the most ticketed campus - that distinction went to Marquette University, with about 7,800 ticketsissuedin its surrounding streets. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus area followed with about 5,800 parking tickets. Still, both of those universities have larger campuses than MATC.

Students aren't specifically being targeted, according to Angelos, but rather the heavy demand for parking near the campuses dictates the heavy hand of parking enforcement.

"Citations are issued where there is a violation of the law," she said. "There is no attempt to cite persons of any specific type or income level other than those who violate the ordinance. This happens in higher-demand areas no matter where vehicles are located."

She said one reason the E. Brady St. parking lot and the strip between MATC and the Bradley Center generated so many tickets was that they have atypical enforcement hours.

Most parking meters run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., whereas the Brady St. lot runs from 9 a.m. until midnight. And the MATC street runs from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. to ensure students can still find parking on Bradley Center event nights.

The third-largest hot spot was in the 700 block of N. 9th St., between the downtown Milwaukee Public Library and the Wisconsin Club, with 1,623 tickets.

Coming in fourth was the 100 block of E. Juneau Ave. between the Milwaukee River and Water St., where parking officers wrote more than 1,400 tickets. Those tickets were issued on both sides of the street where Trinity Three Irish Pubs and Art's Performing Center are located.

Other hot spots include the 200 block of W. Wisconsin Ave. just north of the Shops of Grand Avenue mall, where 1,315 tickets were written, followed by the 700 block of N. Milwaukee St. near Hotel Metro, where 1,240 tickets were issued.

Meredith Wagner lived on Milwaukee's east side for 11 years and, though she now lives in Riverwest, still meets friends at Balzac and other Brady St. bars from time to time. She's been ticketed three times so far this year in the municipal lot behind Balzac, and a total of 10 times over the past three years in that area.

"They've always been bad on Brady St.," Wagner said. "If you don't watch the clock, you will get a parking ticket."

Nighttime revelers get the most tickets in the high-ticket city lot off Brady - more than three-quarters of the citations were issued between 8 p.m. and midnight.

Wagner admitted she should know better by now but said sometimes taking a parking ticket is better than the alternative.

"A lot of times, I'll go down there and then think that I'm going to have one or two and then . . . you see a lot of friends, and it turns into seven," she said. "So you leave your car there. It's a trade-off between getting a drunken-driving ticket or a parking ticket."

Getting tickets overturned

Wagner said that she thought parking enforcement process was reasonable, and that she had succeeded in getting tickets voided in the past after writing them a letter and laying out her predicament.

William, the resident who works with troubled youths, also was able to get a ticket overturned in the past.

Department of Public Works spokeswoman Cecilia Gilbert said that the office does get complaints from disgruntled drivers, but they try to handle them as fairly as possible.

"If there is obviously a mistake, then we waive those tickets," Gilbert said.

The city Public Works Department voided 14,125 tickets during the six-month period analyzed by the newspaper.

This was William's experience, when he was once ticketed for a meter violation despite having a valid meter stub in his car window.

But if it's less clear-cut, unhappy motorists may have to schedule an appointment with the citation review manager to state their case.

"If it's something that's debatable, . . . that's when you have to go down and talk to somebody," Gilbert said.

The critique most heard by Public Investigator was for the city to expand the use of meters that accept credit cards.

Bressert acknowledged Brady St. would see a steady stream of patrons despite the high volume of tickets, but he said parking enforcement could make business easier by replacing more coin meters with the multi-space meters that accept credit and debit cards.

"That's what most people are using to pay for meals and dinners anyway," Bressert said.

And from the customer perspective, Wagner agreed.

"That would be so awesome," she said. "People don't carry change anymore. All we carry are our credit card and our ID."

Gilbert said the city had discussed potentially extending swipe meters to Brady St. and other areas with a high concentration of shopping and dining.

Night parking problems

Night parking was the most common violation in the city with nearly 203,000 tickets in the sixth-month span, or nearly half of all tickets.

Angelos said night parking regulations aim to motivate people to park on either side of the street so that city workers can sweep the streets and plow the roads.

"In the winter, this is especially critical so that emergency vehicles have unhindered access to every block in the city," Angelos said.

Meter parking violations came in second with 86,340 tickets, the newspaper's analysis found.

Parking enforcement officer Francis Sura wrote the most citations in the six-month period with 20,530. Sura was followed by followed by Angela Robert with 16,381 citations and Pamela Johnson with 13,182 citations.

Angelos said parking enforcement officers who write more citations do so because they're assigned to more high-demand areas than other officers.

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How to dispute a citation

If you have any questions concerning a citation or wish to dispute a citation, call the Violations Bureau (414) 344-0840 between 8 a.m and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday to schedule an appointment with the citation review manager.

Got a tip? Do you have an issue with government or a local business or a story idea for Public Investigator? E-mail us at watchdog@journalsentinel.com, or call (414) 224-2318.