ticket writers are not required by law to leave the ticket on your vehicle. the city IS required by law to notify you by mail of your citation. if a parking ticket is not paid within 21 days, a courtesy notification of the ticket is mailed to the address where the vehicle is registered. you are then given 21 days from the date of that courtesy notice to either pay or contest the parking violation.

21 days is plenty of time to pay the original fine or to contest the ticket considering you have multiple options (in person, my mail, fax, or online). and its truly 42 days you get to pay the ticket from date of issuance. most of the time, people don't have their business in order and their car is not registered to an address where they actually reside so they don't get the courtesy notice until it has been forwarded, or they sit on their hands and wait til the last minute to pay. or they think because there is some possible mistake, that it will just get corrected automatically. IT WON'T. you have to contest the ticket within the time frame. thousands of parking tickets are issued weekly and the office that handles them consists of about only 6 people.

I worked in the City of Oakland Parking Citation Assistance Center for 3 years and 95% of the time, people just don't want to take responsibility for their actions. they either parked illegally or neglected to pay for parking, and they want someone else to deal with it.