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There's that all-too-familiar feeling where our hearts sink when we see a red-and-white parking citation clipped under our windshield wipers. Some of us have come to accept that getting a dreaded ticket is just something that happens regularly in Los Angeles. But one parking reform group doesn't want to stand for it anymore and is proposing that we slash the parking citation fees, even down to $23 for first-time offenders.
The Los Angeles Parking Reform Working Group, an advocacy crew commissioned by Mayor Eric Garcetti, says our parking citation fees, which average about $68, are way too high compared to other cities, according to the L.A. Daily News. They propose that we drop it down to $23 for first-time parking violations (that don't affect anyone's safety), $33 for second offenses, $48 for third offenses and $68 for fourth offenses. The group decided on the $23 fine to match the median hourly wage Angelenos earn, the L.A. Times reports.
Garcetti plans on releasing his 2015-16 budget on April 20. It's not clear at this point if this proposal will show up in his budget.
Restructuring parking violation fines is just one of the many things the group proposed. They're also asking for changes with parking meters, that we increase our technology in allowing people to pay for additional time using smartphone apps, and that the city only charges folks for the time they actually use. The advocacy group also proposed that the city reexamines street-cleaning schedules, and look into cutting down the restricted parking hours and also change the schedules that conflict with peak parking times.
Garcetti has promised to crack down on parking policies ever since he was a candidate in the mayoral race, in which he won in 2013. When he found out last November that parking officers were handing out bogus parking tickets in areas that had relaxed parking zones (meaning roads where street cleaning has been cancelled and parking tickets aren't supposed to be handed out), he was upset about it. He vowed that folks who were wrongly cited would be refunded by the city—and he actually did it.
