San Francisco Owes Steve Jobs $174
It has been nearly five years after Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer and the city of San Francisco is looking out for him. No not physically but rather literally because San Francisco is trying to pay him back $176 which he overpaid for parking tickets.
According to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) which owes Jobs the money, every one of the 200,000 tickets it has listed in a series of alphabetical PDF files either paid extra on their ticket or accidentally paid twice.
It’s part of a wider effort by the city government to refund drivers who overpaid their parking tickets. The Apple co-founder’s name appears on a long list that covers hundreds of thousands of overpayments from 1995 to 2012. And he’s in good company: the list includes PayPal co-founder and Facebook investor Peter Thiel who is owed $170; Napster co-founder and Facebook’s first president Sean Parker $320; Salesforce’s Marc Benioff $94. But top of the pile comes, ironically, CEO of Uber Travis Kalanick, who is owed a significant $510.
It is well known that Jobs went to great lengths to avoid parking tickets. Jobs famously changed his car every six months just to take advantage of a California loophole that prevents you from having to install license plates on your vehicle. Jobs also had a habit of deliberately parking in handicap spaces. But because that mostly seemed to happen on Apple’s own campus, it doesn’t appear to have gotten him any tickets. Therefore the overpayment of tickets comes as a surprise.
