‘Two-hour shuffle’
$40 parking tickets in Ketchum’s crystal ball
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
If you’re prone to receiving parking
tickets in Ketchum’s downtown area, brace yourself.
Abusers of the city’s two-hour parking
zones could soon face $40 parking fines for multiple infractions. For
years, $10 fines have been the norm.
The increase was tentatively adopted by the
Ketchum City Council last week.
Two-hour parking zones are enforced Monday
through Friday between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
The new fines would be on an exponential
scale based on the number of infractions attributed to a vehicle inside a
year’s time. The first infraction would prompt a warning from the police
department. Thereafter, a $10 fine would be followed by $20 and $40 fines
for the second, third and fourth infractions.
For a fifth violation where four or more
citations are unpaid inside a 12-month period, and one of the tickets is
delinquent by 90 days or more, a vehicle would be towed, costing the owner
$90 plus $20 to $40 worth of administrative fees and payment of all unpaid
parking tickets before the vehicle would be returned.
Theoretically, that’s how it would work,
explained Ketchum police chief Cal Nevland in an interview.
On Tuesday of last week, Nevland and police
code enforcement officer Beverly Hedin presented the plan to Ketchum City
Council members, who endorsed it throughout. In fact, council members
advocated issuing $80 fines for fifth infractions, but Mayor Guy Coles
asked them to reconsider, and they did.
At the meeting’s conclusion, the council
unanimously voted, with Councilman Randy Hall absent, to ask city attorney
Margaret Simms to redraft the city’s parking ordinance to include the
incremental fine scale. The redrafted ordinance is expected back for the
council’s review on Jan. 16. The meeting begins at 5 p.m.
At that meeting, said Councilman David
Hutchinson, the council may waive the three readings commonly used to
adjust or adopt a new ordinance, and adopt the new fine structure.
"This will work," Hutchinson
said. "It’s the chronic offenders who are killing us."
According to Nevland, a few people parking
in the downtown area’s two-hour zones are tying up spaces all day long
on a repeated basis, in some cases moving vehicles every two hours to
avoid being ticketed.
He called the car-moving phenomenon the
"two-hour shuffle."
"We know they’re doing it," he
said.
In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2000,
Ketchum police issued approximately 3,000 two-hour parking citations. Of
those, approximately 510 went unpaid, and about 90 were issued to vehicles
that garnered five or more citations during the year, according to numbers
collected by police code enforcement officer Martha Heuston.
During the fiscal year, the city garnered
about $43,000 from parking tickets issued in all parking zones.
"The whole purpose of two-hour parking
is to make parking available to customers of core businesses,"
Nevland said. "The majority of the people who need to park there all
day are parking outside the core, but there are a few who are trying to
beat the system and not walk three blocks.
"They’re willing to take the chance
with $10 fines. They’ll [probably] now have to weigh the possibility of
a $40 fine against walking several blocks."
In order to implement the new rates, the
city will need to adopt what is called a "scoff law," which
would be designed to keep ticketed persons from turning their noses up at
parking tickets.
According to a memo from Hedin, the city
lost about $28,480 in unpaid parking tickets from all its parking zones in
the past three calendar years.
The "scoff law" will enable the
towing of vehicles upon a fifth offense, thereby ensuring payment by
requiring payment before the vehicle would be returned.
The incremental parking fines would not
have been possible just six months ago. In September, the police
department started using a computerized ticketing system that logs
ticketed vehicles into a database each night.
The compiled information is downloaded into
portable computer systems that are carried by police officers. When a
license plate is entered into the portable unit, the number of times the
vehicle has been ticketed prior is immediately shown, and can be added to
the equation of how much the person’s fine would be under the pending
incremental citations.
The portable unit prints tickets, which are
left on windshields as traditional parking citations are.
The police department is leasing the system
at $140 a month. To purchase it, Nevland said, would cost about $20,000.
Discussion of increasing parking fines, and
even of implementing parking meters, isn’t new at Ketchum City Hall.
In March of last year, city traffic
consultant Darrell Wilburn told the city council that for now, the
downtown area’s parking availability is adequate, but seven years from
now, or earlier, something will have to be done to increase availability.
Building more parking spaces is not the
answer, Wilburn said; rather, better management of existing parking is the
best solution.
Wilburn presented a report to the council
that recommended converting Ketchum’s two-hour parking spaces to paid
parking or increasing fines for those who overstay their limits.
"Fifty-dollar tickets and one-hour
parking will certainly get rid of the long-term parkers," he said.
As they did last week, the council endorsed
the ideas presented in Wilburn’s report.
The average stay for someone parking in
Ketchum’s downtown area is one hour, according to the report. About 25
percent of those parking downtown stay longer than an hour.
Wilburn said those who park longer than one
hour are taking up a lot of the available parking spaces in town.
"Parking meters are very effective for
enforcement," he said. "Metering is a tool and you need to use
it as your parking demand requires."
Peak summer traffic, the busiest time in
Ketchum, creates 85 percent parking occupancy in an eight-block area of
Ketchum’s downtown. He forecast 2 percent growth in parking demand per
year, if Ketchum continues to grow at its current pace.
The uncertainty with parking meters, he
said, is that "parking meters could discourage people from coming
into the downtown area, but if there are no parking spaces, they don’t
come anyway."
Nevland said he’s not thrilled about the
eventual prospect of parking meters in Ketchum.
"There’s more and more talk of
meters," he said. "This (new fine structure) will probably hold
that off for a few more years."
