Downtown Parking Question

My husband and I went to brunch at Young Cardinal today and we parked on 4th Street. There’s a sign there that has the pay to park information but it also says 2-hour Public Parking Monday-Friday 8-5. We assumed because it was a Thursday at 11am we didn’t need to pay because it said Public Parking and we were within the date and time range and we weren’t going to be there for over 2 hours. Anyway we came out of Young Cardinal and we had a ticket. It’s only $30 so I’m just going to pay it but that’s confusing, right? Or are we just dumb?