The last chapter of the saga of my traffic ticket has drawn to a close. To recap: I was charged with doing 82 in a 65, and fined $150 for it, on October 8th. I was not doing 82 (closer to 75), and the maximum they were allowed to charge me was $125, by state and city law. Now then, the court date that appeared to be written on my ticket was today; November 15th. So, my father (who joined me on this adventure) and I called City Hall this morning to confirm that that’s where traffic court was. Well, it is, but not today. The actual date was the 13th. So, I was in trouble. We drove over to City Hall to sort everything out, and I was given a new court date of December 11th, as it looked like November 15th on the ticket to them , as well. Right about this time, both of us upset about wasting days off, my dad decides we should go visit the prosecutor for the city of Canton, who he knows in a round about way. It’s a small town, and my father published the city news paper(s) for years, and has lived here all his life, so he knows a few people. So I gathered up my case papers copied from the state code of Georgia, the county code of Cherokee, and the city code of Canton, and off we went. Long story short: not only did he notice they were overcharging me, but it seems that after reviewing the laws, they might have been doing it for quite awhile. My offense was lowered to 75 in a 65, no points on my license! My new fine, which I just paid: $43.75. The people of City Hall were nice, even if they were seeing us for the second time in an hour.

It looked like a 15 to the city prosecutor, too.