The city of ɫ is cracking down on downtown parking violations with an electronic monitoring system.
The ɫ City Council approved a contract this week with T2 Parking Management Systems for an initial cost of $9,652 and an annual cost of $3,828.
Sharon Jablonski, the city’s cultural and creative development director, said the change in ticketing systems is in response to ongoing challenges with manual ticketing processes, including chalking of tires to monitor parking time, inefficiency of collections and a lack of repercussion for nonpayment of tickets and habitual offenders.
Jablonski said T2 Parking Management, which was developed by police officers, allows people to see their ticket and make a mobile payment at the time of ticketing by scanning a QR code. For those not comfortable making a mobile payment, there is a toll-free number to call to make a payment, she said. She said there is an option to have pay stations as well.
It also offers people a way to dispute a ticket, she said.
Jablonski said the system takes pictures of the license plate and also the tire valve and its position to determine how long a car has been parked. She said it’s more difficult to beat the system than the current method used of making a chalk mark on a tire.
“Unlike going out and washing off the chalk or moving your car to hide the chalk, it doesn’t work like that,” Jablonski said.
Jablonski said the system will alert the enforcement officer when someone has gone over the allotted time.
There will be exceptions for downtown residents and for those, for instance, doing construction work, she said. She plans to also propose some extended parking times.
Jablonski said one of the things the parking committee is looking at proposing is making the parking around the courthouse square visitor/customer parking only, as well as permanent parking for downtown residents.
She said the system should be operational by October.
Contracting with the company came from a meeting in May of the downtown parking committee, Jablonski said. She said in addition to contracting for an electronic ticketing system, the committee also considered changes to the ordinance concerning enforcement and punishment.
A proposal to update the ordinance will be brought to the council in September. Included in the proposed ordinance update would be the parking zones and times, as well as proposed fines, City Manager Sally Sandy said.
