You have to pay to park now in Fairhaven. But there’s only one parking-control officer
The city’s labor shortage is so critical that there’s only one parking-control officer for all of Bellingham, even as paid parking was expanded to the Fairhaven shopping district this month as part of new higher hourly rates and increased fines.
Funding is budgeted for four full-time officers and the city will be advertising soon for three vacant positions, said Eric Johnston, director of the Public Works Department.
“There’s a shortage in every city department as well, “ Johnston told The Bellingham Herald.
That includes the Police Department, which had to eliminate special units to focus on patrol and investigations.
Public Works alone has some 43 open positions, Johnston said.
“It has everything to do with the Great Resignation of 2022,” he said, citing a nationwide trend of people switching careers or moving amid the new coronavirus pandemic.
But a shortage of parking officers doesn’t mean that downtown visitors should ignore the meters, Johnston said.
“The city is actively doing parking enforcement,” he said. “It doesn’t take a lot of parking tickets to get people to pay the meters.”
But more enforcement is exactly what some Bellingham residents are seeking — especially those who live in neighborhoods around Western Washington University, where parking is scarce when classes are in session.
“Some of the violations create blind spots for drivers entering North Garden from Oak, or any intersection,” Sehome resident Walt Burkett told The Herald.
“Some create blind spots where drivers cannot see the thousands of pedestrians who cross the street in the two-block stretch from Cedar to Oak on Garden. Oh, and then the fact that some block fire hydrants,” Burkett said.
Even as the city is moving to hire more parking officers, they’ll soon be moved out of the Police Department and into Public Works, Johnston said.
“There’s a lot of things that parking officers deal with that’s not part of the police department,” he said.
In addition to writing citations for meter violations, parking officers respond to complaints about abandoned cars or cars parked on sidewalks, near hydrants and those that are blocking mailboxes or have been parked in the same place for more than 72 hours.
Pay scale for the union-eligible job ranges from $24.61 to $30.29 an hour, plus benefits.
