Pay the ticket immediately.

Trying to deal with UMD Parking Services invites the most screwed-up, bureaucratic nightmare imaginable. The check you write to pay your ticket goes to some place in New Jersey or some other such nonsensical destination. There is no local court of appeal or system for due process with a UMD Parking Services ticket. Or at least, that was the case a few years ago when my wife and I ran afoul of them. 

We were renting some stuff from the UMD theater department for a high school play. We parked two cars for about five minutes in a marked "Loading Zone" behind the Marshall Performing Arts Center (with our safety blinkers going) and lugged our furniture outside to find each vehicle tagged with $25 tickets. 

When I called Parking Services to explain the situation, a woman there told me cheerfully that she would nullify the tickets and not to sweat it. A month later we got letters from this outfit saying the tickets were still unpaid and had now ballooned to well over a $100 each and were still climbing. When I called Parking Services to explain the situation, a very curt, rude woman (not the original person I had spoken to, but her supervisor) basically called me a liar and told me to pay up. 

They had all sorts of ways to screw up our credit, etc. and there was no possible way to go to court or other way to sort this whole thing. So we paid them. I'm still fuming, and as a result,  we have quit contributing to any alumni causes or other UMD charities/functions. An overreaction perhaps, but we were made to feel just that angry and helpless. 

This undid years of goodwill between us and the adjacent university (which is our neighbor, and of whom, up to that time, we had been solid boosters). In my book, UMD Parking Service gets a big, big zero in terms of university/public relations.

In your case, thomasbury, I think it's very interesting that you were ticketed for a city ordinance by UMD Parking Services while parked off campus. Where does this money go? Perhaps there is a mechanism by which it is funneled back to the city, but I'd be very interested to know where your ticket says to send the money. And even though you fully admit your guilt in this matter, I'd be incredibly pissed to discover that the same outsourced system I encountered could ticket me in front of my house with (if my experience still holds true), no opportunity for due process or grievance.

Good luck! (And thanks for the opportunity to vent. I've waited years for an appropriate forum to get this off of my chest!)

Oh man, just when I'd finally settled down a bit... Let me just say that "disputing" a ticket by "contacting parking services" is a far cry from due process. On a good day, you may talk to a nice lady who listens sympathetically and promises you that all is forgiven, only to find that a month later your violation is still active, the fee has more than quadrupled, and the surly supervisor grunts that "no one in this office would ever have told you your ticket would be dismissed." Negotiate with them at your peril.