DANSVILLE, N.Y. — A Livingston County couple is waging a long-distance battle with the city of Buffalo which thus far has resulted in the loss of the use of their vehicle.
It stems from a ticket they insist they are not responsible for and have refused to pay.
“I’m not paying a nickel of it,” said Jim Bennett. “And even if I was forced into a corner and had to pay it, then I got $85 in pennies in two pails and that's just the damn way I'd pay it,” he said.
Bennett and his wife Jody live in Dansville, which is about a 1-1/2 hour drive from Buffalo.
On May 19th they left their home to travel to South Carolina to visit Jim's ailing father, a 92 year old veteran of World War II.
When they came back in early June, they collected their mail and among the items was a letter from the City of Buffalo.
"I said what the heck is this? We haven't been to Buffalo in 8 years,” Bennett recalled.
It was a notification of an unpaid ticket that had been issued on Richfield Avenue in South Buffalo on May 21st, which they found peculiar.
For one thing, that's when they were in South Carolina.
For another, their vehicle had been locked in a garage to which no one had access.
And most mystifying of all, the ticket was for an expired registration, even though the Bennetts had leased their vehicle, brand new, just two months before the ticket was issued.
In other words, for the two year New York State registration to have been expired it would have had to have been issued in March of 2017.
“That’s 18 months prior to my car being built, let alone me buying it," Bennett said.
What the Heck, Indeed?
The Bennetts figured it was a simple mistake, with the likelihood that whoever wrote the ticket probably wrote it on a car with a license plate very similar to his.
Because they actually had no ticket in hand, the Bennetts looked up the number for the City of Buffalo Parking Violation’s Bureau, thinking they could resolve the matter with a simple phone call.
“I called up and spoke to a woman and asked her to pull up the original ticket and tell me, from the hard copy, the make, model and color of the car. After six or eight minutes, she got back on the phone and said, I’m sorry sir…that information is not on the ticket.”
That’s when Bennett decided to tell her a bit more about himself.
I informed her that I was a Livingston County Deputy Sheriff…and that there was no way the ticket wouldn’t have that information.”
It Wasn't Our Car
The summons the Bennetts received told them that they could appear for a hearing on June 24, but they opted not to.
"I had a day shift working at the Sheriff’s department and was not going to be able to take off of work…and why should I drive two hours to Buffalo when I wasn’t guilty in the first place?” Jim said.
Instead, he says he sent numerous letters to the Parking Violations Bureau, containing his registration and insurance information.
“You'd think there’d be one person there that was smart enough to figure out that that registration did match that plate …but heck no,” Jim said in frustration.
The Bennett's also got an attorney, who was able to get a copy of what purports to be the original ticket, although they have their doubts.
The ticket, we noted, does identify his VIN number and make of the vehicle.
“They could have taken that off of my registration after I sent that to them,…it would be easy,” Bennett said.
The Bennetts also placed several calls seeking to speak with City Parking Commissioner Kevin Helfer--who they say failed to return any of them.
The couple described his non-responsiveness to their phone calls as “pathetic”.
Car Taken off the Road
The Bennetts eventually got a letter from Helfer, however, indicating that the original $40 fine had been increased to $85, plus a $10 surcharge and that the city was going to notify the DMV in an effort to get the registration for their vehicle suspended.
That occurred on October 30, just about the same day Mr. Bennett’s ailing father passed away.
The leased Jeep now sits in a garage…with the Bennetts unable to drive it.
When asked if at this point it might make more sense to just pay the fines, the Bennetts were firm in their resolve.
“No…..because when I'm wrong I'll take my dues and when I'm right I'm not gonna stop. Never,” Mr. Bennett said.
That Didn't Take Long
Jim holds to his theory that a simple mistake made on a Tuesday afternoon on Richfield Avenue some 6 months ago lead to all of this.
“And I’ll bet my last dollar that I could drive up there on a Tuesday at 5:45pm, a car probably would be sitting there with a plate that was one digit one number off of mine,” he said.
Two on Your Side visited the location where the ticket was issued on Tuesday afternoon at 3:45 pm.
Within seconds we noticed a compact sedan, with a license plate identical to the one on the Bennetts vehicle…except for the first letter.
Theirs starts with a “J”, and the one parked in the same location the ticket was issued starts with a “G”, and the rest of the letter and number sequence is the same.
The car also had a registration sticker that indicates the prior registration would have expired....at the same time...that the ticket said eh Bennet’s vehicle had.
"That's the one I'm being charged for," Bennett said. “This whole thing has been a nightmare.”
No Love from City Hall
The Bennetts say won't be satisfied until the ticket is dismissed, the fines are waived, their registration is restored, and they receive an apology from the city.
However, a city spokesperson says as far as the city is concerned, the Bennetts had a chance to argue this before a hearing officer and chose not to...and because their subsequent request to appeal the officer's ruling was not made within the required 30 days, their ticket stands.
We have asked for two days to speak with parking Commissioner Kevin Helfe, but a city spokesperson says because the Bennetts got a lawyer involved, this raises the potential for litigation, and so no interview will be granted.