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closeIt’s hard to have sympathy for someone who has nearly $5,000 in unpaid parking tickets, the amount owed the city by the owner of a car with the Washington license plate number of 320VJE.
In fact, just the opposite. We’d like to see the driver held up to public scorn, but state law prevents the city from releasing the owner’s name to the public.
For someone who so flouts the law and attempts at collection, however, there’s a better remedy. The owner ought to get the boot — that’s the colloquial term for a clamp that immobilizes a car whose owner has accumulated too many unpaid parking tickets. It’s done with apparent success at Western Washington University, and it might just be time to try it in Bellingham, where the city has some $1.5 million in outstanding parking tickets.
In response to a Bellingham Herald story on the subject last week, Mayor Dan Pike said he would be discussing the matter with other city officials, some of whom have been reluctant to take such a drastic step as affixing the boot.
But leaving a disabled car in the street until its owner pays up can have a positive effect — it shows everyone that the city isn’t afraid to use its muscle.
We’d urge Pike to order officials to try wheel clamps, or maybe even towing and impounding of such scofflaws’ cars.
We understand people’s aversion to feeding meters or juggling parking spots if they live or work downtown. Who can say they truly enjoy the hassle of hoarding change just to feed the meter? The city needs to address more long-term parking for residents and downtown workers, and city officials have promised they are working to solve that issue as they address the redevelopment of the formerly industrial waterfront.
And there is the apparent inequality of neighborhood shopping districts like Fairhaven, where there are no meters and parking is difficult.
But for the present, parking downtown is limited, and it’s going to get worse with new buildings such as the Whatcom Art and Children’s Museum that’s going up near the library.
Those scarce downtown parking spaces must remain open if local merchants, who make the Central Business District such a lively place, are to thrive. Sure, it’s free to park at Bellis Fair. The mall is an important economic asset to the city. But is the mall the heart and soul of our community?
No, downtown is.
We can encourage downtown workers to ride the bus, car pool, or park on the margins of the downtown core where spaces are free. And we can encourage downtown residents to find permanent parking solutions. All those options are better than taking up parking spaces that are sorely needed for the customers of downtown businesses.
But that doesn’t address the problem of unpaid tickets and fines in a constructive way. Neither does the endless cycle of ticketing, billing, and sending overdue fines to a collection agency.
According to The Herald’s reporting last week, some 76 percent of ticketed vehicles received only one ticket in 2007. Those people likely paid their $10 fines and kept a better eye on the meter, lest they get socked with another yellow envelope on the windshield.
Most of the others grudgingly pay their fines after a few more warning notices and perhaps a late fee. But we’re talking about habitual offenders who just won’t cough up what they owe. For them, the city needs the proverbial stick.
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