Does City Have the Right to Cut My Lock?
So here is the situation: last week, my winter bike disappeared from in front of my apartment. It was locked to a sidewalk bike post. After several days I managed to deduce that it was removed by a city vehicle. This involved many phone calls and getting an eye witness to the event.
This morning I got the bike returned by city engineering. The guy who cut the lock said it was taken because it was abandoned. He said he left a hand written tag on it before Christmas. This bike is at my front door and I never saw a tag. There was no tag when he returned it, and he said there was no tag on it when he cut the lock, claiming it may have blown away in the wind. I haven't used the bike since before Christmas, so it has been sitting there. But that is only because the roads have been covered in snow and ice. My apartment is upstairs and small, so I don't like keeping a dirty bike indoors. The bike is not really valuable, which is why I lock it outside, and the chain was rusted.
So now I have my bike back. I was kind of upset by the amount of work I had to go through just to track it down. But do I have any recourse to get my lock replaced? The bike is worth maybe $50 and the lock cost me $20, so it's about half the value of the bike. I just feel that it is unfair that the city can destroy my property like that. I understand the need to remove abandoned bikes, but without any tag or notice on the bike that I saw, I think I should get a new lock and an apology.