Tying up loose ends… the city of Harrisburg is working on a series of technical amendments that will allow it to collect more money when it comes to parking. Right now city leaders say because of a lapse in wording in some ordinances, the city is actually losing money.
Many say new meters have enhanced the city’s parking enforcement. But in reality, the city isn’t receiving money from unpaid tickets because there’s no legal procedure set up with the courts. City solicitor, Neil Grover, says that issue is one for standard parking, who have not returned our phone calls. Grover says a list of technical amendments presented to city council will help the city collect the money it’s not receiving.
"It's because government can be slow when it changes. That's the reality. We've worked with a lot of different people in different agencies. We've been hung up on IT questions on implementing things with the court system," says Grover.
Council president, Wanda Williams, says the city was unable to pass this legislation earlier because there wasn't enough staff in the city solicitor's office to draft it. The city has lost about 100,000 dollars this year.
"We could've gained it if we could've had these amendments done before the period of this year, they would go through, but we didn't," says Williams.
Williams is happy with the amendments. But some of the language could allow standard parking to ticket people non-stop depending on where they're parked.
"Do you continuously give tickets to those individuals who are late on their parking? Is that over a period of one day or is that consecutively two hours, two hours, you're consistently giving a parking ticket?" asked Williams.
Grover says this has always been allowed in Harrisburg, but it hasn't actually happened. Now council is concerned people could get ticket on top of ticket.
"If someone's telling me, and I'm a for profit corporation, that I could come back every hour and give them a 30 dollar ticket, guess what? I'm going to come back every hour and give you a 30 dollar ticket," says council member, Sandra Reid.
City council will vote on these amendments Wednesday, November 12th. Williams expects council will pass them.
