The checks – ranging from about $22 to $75 – will be sent to about 4,000 people whose vehicles were improperly ticketed or impounded. A total of about $122,600 will be given back to people who received tickets and paid fines.

The refunds are part of a mediated settlement of a lawsuit that challenged the holiday tickets.

A Bellevue resident, Colette Turner, had sued the city after she received a $35 ticket for failing to pay a parking meter on New Year’s Eve 2004, which was a Friday. The meter’s sign said parking was free on holidays – and at the time, the city’s traffic code said parking was free on Fridays before legal holidays that fell on a Saturday. But she still got a ticket.

A judge last year ruled in favor of Turner and others who were ticketed for parking on legal holidays from 2003 to 2006.

The Associated Press