McKeown sent me an e-mail on Monday morning to say he'd worked with city staff to correct the situation. So, I headed over to the scene of the nine after lunch and, sure enough, the odd time limit had been extended, as evidenced by a couple shiny, new signs (see inset).

McKeown explained it this way in a follow-up e-mail:

We recently changed a number of meters on that strip from 10 hours to 9 hours. There were, mixed in, some shorter term meters measured in minutes. Apparently some of the new "9" stickers got pasted onto the "minutes" meters by mistake.

You show me a government that fixes tickets that fast, and I'm there.