A Wyoming Girl Scout and her mother were hit with $400 in fines for selling cookies from a stand in her grandparents driveway.
Erica Fairbanks McCarroll and her 13-year-old daughter Emma were selling cookies after school on Erica’s parents property along Main Street in Pinedale when they were approached by a code enforcement officer on March 13.
Fairbanks McCarroll told DailyMail.com the woman, who was driving the town’s animal control vehicle and did not identify herself as code enforcement, told them they could not block the sidewalk.
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‘We sold for about 1 hour and 30 minutes when she showed up and handed me 3 parking tickets totaling $400,’ Fairbanks McCarroll said on Facebook.
‘I responded that I had complied with what she had asked and had moved off the sidewalk. She said the tickets aren’t just for being on the sidewalk and that this is for your daughter’s safety.’
Fairbanks McCarroll was given a $100 fine for parking on the sidewalk, a $150 fine for unlawful obstruction and another $150 fine for a municipal code that said there needs to be at least five feet of unobstructed passage on the sidewalk.
‘Sometimes I just think that government can be unreasonable. It wasn’t reasonable to be fined $400 for selling cookies in front on my grandparent’s property,’ Emma told Cowboy State Daily, who photographed the mother daughter duo.
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Fairbanks McCarroll said, ‘She did not identify herself as Code Enforcement, she did not say what I was doing was illegal, she didn’t say she would or even could write me a ticket, she didn’t even say I couldn’t sell there anymore. All she said really was you shouldn’t block the sidewalk.’
When the code enforcement officer told her the Fairbanks probably would not like her blocking their property, Fairbanks McCarroll said: ‘I responded with ‘the Fairbanks are my parents and they don’t care.’ She then said ‘okay well I just recommend you don’t block the sidewalk’ and left.’
The town of Pinedale released a statement insisting the officer was acting under official capacity when she approached Fairbanks McCarroll and warned her several times to move before issuing the citations.
‘She received two verbal requests to relocate her stand outside of the WYDOT right-of-way, off of the sidewalk, and closer to her parents’ private property,’ the town said.
‘Despite these requests, the stand remained on the sidewalk, prompting the issuance of three citations for obstructing the sidewalk.’
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‘The code enforcement officer admitting later to my brother that she was having a bad day on Friday, and that she didn’t realize my brother had any siblings,’ the mother said.
‘Is that to say that if she knew I was really part of the Fairbanks family, she wouldn’t have written me the tickets?’
Fairbanks McCarroll obtained a lawyer and they were able to get two of the tickets dismissed. She ended up paying one of the $150 fines rather than go to trial because it would end up being more costly.
‘The lack of clear instructions on what I can and cannot do, said I couldn’t block the sidewalk and then later at the town hall office said if I had been on the sidewalk, I would have been fine,’ Fairbanks McCarroll said.
‘Honestly it just sucks that my daughters whole experience around selling cookies was crushed in the small town I grew up in.’
* Original Article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13343199/amp/Girl-Scout-Erica-Fairbanks-McCarroll-cookies-fined.html?ito=smartnews
