Parking Boots on the Agenda for this Week’s City Council Meeting

December 11, 2022

Mountaineer News

Buckhannon City Council

City Attorney Tom O'Neill addresses City Council during their December 1st meeting.

BUCKHANNON - During the December 1st Council meeting, City Attorney Tom O'Neill was prepared to discuss updates relative to the discussions of parking enforcement Council previously had.

“Council may recall that we had before a draft ordinance regarding means of enforcement of our City's parking ordinances and the addition of an ordinance to our code of ordinances regarding the use of parking boots. During that time it became clear that this situation really implicates the police department and that we really should have a conversation with the leadership of the police department before we proceeded with that ordinance as it was then drafted," O'Neill said.

"We held that meeting... various City stakeholders were involved in that, and the resolution that was reached at that meeting was to propose to Council that we take a simpler approach, and that instead of an all new ordinance that would create a process by which the use of parking boots and towing would then be authorized, that we just amend our existing parking ordinances to mirror state code," he said.

"Part of our discussion that day was with Chief (Matthew) Gregory and Lieutenant (Doug) Loudin. We spent some time in the code and we found language in the code that got us close to where we needed to be to be authorized to do what we do want to do here but it didn't quite get us there. So, the draft ordinance you have in your packet for you to consider, barring direction otherwise, will appear for first reading at the next meeting of Council. It's a much simpler approach, and that is, it simply characterizes itself as an Amendment of our existing parking ordinances to use "towing or other means Including the use of a vehicle immobilization device to enforce our parking ordinances," O'Neill said.

"That wasn't clearly the case before. state code authorizes municipalities to use parking boots in and towing in certain circumstances, but we just didn't feel that the way the code was drafted that it dealt with our recalcitrant parking violator situations," he said.

"This is a much simpler approach. All it does is authorize the use of these means as an enforcement mechanism that the existing process and procedures that already appear in our other parking ordinances will remain unchanged and in effect and this just adds one more tool to the toolbox that the parking enforcement officer and the city police can use to deal with the very, very few true problem cases that we have," he said.

Mr. O'Neill further discussed one specific case where the amendment would have allowed the City "more teeth" regarding the true problem cases.

"There was one individual that we discussed at that meeting who had over $1,000 worth of unpaid parking tickets... that this person just thumbed her nose at the whole process... she would ignore summonses, ignore municipal court orders and then, it turns out she's left town and moved elsewhere. So, the city just is never going to see the money from those violations. This would give a little more teeth to the true problem cases," he said.

Watch City Attorney Tom O'Neill address City Council with a parking boot update: