parking

Booting of Vehicles

Have you ever had your vehicle booted? Several years ago in Atlanta I came out of the hotel to my car only to find it booted. And that was after I thought I had paid the appropriate fees. It is a frustrating experience, especially if you have somewhere to be.

Apparently one man had had enough of the booting of vehicles. James Whitfield sued Atlanta and a parking enforcement company over the constitutionality of Atlanta’s ordinance allowing boots to be placed on cars. Unfortunately for Mr. Whitfield he failed to properly enter the ordinance into the record. In an opinion released today, the Supreme Court of Georgia refused to pass judgment on the constitutionality issue due to Mr. Whitfield’s failure. You can read the opinion here: http://bit.ly/1EB4xyB.

What do you think about booting cars for parking violations? Will this be implemented in Augusta if/when they install parking meters?

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Downtown Parking

In today’s paper, Augusta residents again got to read about the DDA’s proposal to install parking meters on Broad Street. link to article. You can find my other post regarding downtown parking here: link.

Reading today’s article made me wonder how the city will enforce the parking meters should the proposal pass. It stated that the private company who will install the parking meters will “handle enforcement duties for the first five years”. What exactly does that mean? Are they just writing tickets on behalf of Richmond County?

Also, what court is going to be charged with hearing appeals from the parking tickets? As you may remember, the Augusta Chronicle has reported, in an article from May discussing the enforcement of the 2 hour parking limit, that the “city has no court assigned to hear appeals from ticketed motorists, so it cannot make them pay the [parking] fines”. link. 

What is the point of issuing fines if they can’t be enforced?

Of course, I am sure the county will saddle the Magistrate Judges with the duty of hearing all of the parking fine appeals. I would put money on that causing the county to have to hire another judge. I wonder if Woodard accounted for that additional expenses when she stated that the parking meters would net the county around 3 million after 10 years?

Please don’t forget to visit my law office’s website: http://nehlaw.com/

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