'Swamped' Educator Ran Up $9,170 in Parking Tickets

A woman who racked up 53 parking tickets in the Village of East Hampton, mostly between May and August of 2017, totaling $9,170, had her day in court on Jan. 29. 

After a 15-minute conference behind closed doors between Mariah Bruehl, the recipient of the tickets, and Brian J. Lester, an attorney representing East Hampton Village, it was agreed that she would pay $100 apiece for 36 parking overtime tickets, $50 each for six expired inspection sticker tickets, and two $50 fines for not having any parking pass on her dashboard at all, for a total of $4,000. The tickets appear to have all been written in the Schenck parking lot, which is near her place of business and has a two-hour limit.

According to Ms. Bruehl, her business on Newtown Lane was humming along last summer season, seven days a week. “I just got swamped,” she said while waiting to pay the first $1,000 of the fine at the court clerk’s window.

According to her LinkedIn page, Ms. Bruehl is the founder of Playful Learning, originally an online learning center for children, parents, and teachers, which opened a studio for creative learning on Newtown Lane in 2015. 

As the tickets kept mounting in 2017, Ms. Bruehl knew she had to take the time to deal with it, but time was short, she said. Finally, she made a court date, seeking to resolve all of them at one time.