Stephen Coyle decided to pay his $110 parking fines in pennies. All 60 pounds of the 11,000 copper pennies were taken to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in hopes to take a stance against where the university spent their fine money.
Here are the details via NY Daily News:
He didn’t have an issue with the citations, he deserved them, he says. Rather, he was upset about where the fines were headed — to the coffers of other schools.
He wanted to make a point, he said.
“I started digging deeper of what the money was used for and 80 percent is redistributed to other schools instead of keeping it on campus,” he told ABC News. “That’s what upset me, which led to paying with the pennies.”
According to state law, the college campus retains 20% of traffic fines, with the rest going to local public schools.
Coyle says all of the money should stay with the university, which needs the funds.
It took a total of 4 hours for bank workers to count the 11,000 pennies. I agree that the fine money should be used at the university of which it was paid from.