Longmont parking officers likely to hand out more tickets in 2018

Longmont parking enforcement officers predict they will hand out more tickets in 2018 for parking violations than last year due to more adequate staffing and the ability to easily survey vehicles downtown afforded by automatic license plate recognition equipment.

A parking enforcement vehicle with automatic license plate recognition was activated in March last year, and soon after, Mike Saylor began working for the city as a part-time parking enforcement officer, joining longtime Officer Barb Ratner as the only two parking officers in Longmont.

Before the city installed license plate recognition equipment on the vehicle last year, Ratner would walk around downtown and leave chalk marks on tires of parked vehicles to gauge overtime parking.

Because the two officers handed out a number of warnings in lieu of tickets in the several weeks following the enforcement vehicle's initiation last year, and since Ratner was on her own before Saylor's hiring in April, she foresees illegal and overtime parking downtown will be punished more frequently this year.

Even though the license plate recognition system was used for most of last year, the 3,336 tickets handed out in 2017 marked a decrease from the year before, when 3,625 tickets were written, according to statistics from Longmont's parking enforcement division.

Images from the license plate recognition camera appear on screen while parking enforcement officers patrol downtown Longmont on Thursday afternoon. (Lewis Geyer / Staff Photographer)

Despite fewer tickets being doled out, the revenue for the city generated from last year's parking violations totaled $96,660, a jump of more than $12,500 from the $84,121 the city collected in 2016.

Ratner said the reason for the discrepancy between total revenue and tickets written between the two years is that more costly violations were cited in 2017 than the year before.

A schedule of parking fines can be found on the city's website, which shows the $100 fine for unauthorized parking in a handicapped spot is the most costly violation, while parking on the wrong side of the street and backing into diagonal spots are the smallest setbacks with $10 tickets.

In the past, people could barely move their cars to roll chalk dust off their tires and avoid overtime tickets by parking in the same spot, but Ratner now recommends moving at least one spot away to avoid being unintentionally flagged by the automatic license plate reader.

Re-parking in the same spot provides a renewal on the time limit for the parking spot, but the automatic license plate reader sometimes fails to recognize that a car slightly moved before registering it is parked overtime, she said.

The license plate reader system allows Ratner and Saylor to compare two pictures taken of a flagged car's position at different times, and some tickets were successfully appealed last year after the officers decided the cited vehicle had moved and simply re-parked in the same spot.

Most successful dismissals of parking tickets on an appeal, though, are granted because the vehicle owner was cited for parking in a handicapped space and forgot to display a disability placard on the windshield, or due to someone ticketed for expired license plate registration failing to display the proper documentation while it is in the car's glove box, Ratner said.

Of the 338 appeals to parking tickets filed in Longmont last year, 278 were dismissed, with 60 upheld; in 2016, drivers filed 398 appeals, 313 of which were ultimately dismissed.

Chalking tires while walking a route around downtown isn't totally in the past for Ratner, who said she has worked as a parking enforcement officer in Longmont for 18 years.

When the vehicle with the license plate reader equipment requires mechanical maintenance, for example, Ratner and Saylor will resort to chalk to watch out for overtime parking.

But being visible, and not simply behind the wheel of a vehicle, is welcomed by Ratner to give residents the chance to ask questions about why they might have received a ticket or how they can avoid a citation in the future.

"I would miss everybody if I wasn't out walking a little bit," Ratner said.

Lot-specific parking permits are available for $5 per day from the Longmont Downtown Development Authority at 528 Main St. Multiple days can be purchased in advance.

Businesses and residents in the downtown area can apply for an annual parking permit issued by the LDDA for $28 per month, paid in six monthly increments.

Sam Lounsberry: 303-473-1322, slounsberry@prairiemountainmedia.com and twitter.com/samlounz.