An ordinance was passed to make parking in broken meters illegal in the city of Tempe last Thursday.
The Tempe City Council quickly passed the ordinance after about a 10-minute discussion. The Tempe City Code, chapter 19 section 19-142 states that one may not park in an expired meter, but that code does not regard broken or jammed meters.
Chris R. Salomone, Community Development Manager, said that this law is typical in most surrounding cities, as well as on the Arizona State University campus. He said in the past 18 months jamming parking meters to get out of paying has been a phenomenon.
Councilmember Joel Navarro questioned how the public would be informed of the change.
“For the person that’s coming from out of town, the person that’s a new resident, the person that doesn’t know the rules”, Navarro said. “Is there going to be some sort of indication on the meter?”
Salomone said that the Downtown Tempe Community would be putting stickers on jammed or broken meters that read, “if this is disabled you may not park here.”
Meters that can’t be fixed will be covered with a red bag. The bag indicates that one cannot park in that designated spot.
Councilmember Corey Woods said that he was concerned if the ordinance was actually enforceable.
“I can’t answer that,” Salomone said. “The idea is to overcome the problem of people disabling, and I think this will eliminate a lot of
that.”
Mayor Hugh Hallman made the comparison of parking in a spot with an expired meter to parking in a spot with a broken one.
“Right now somebody writes you a ticket saying the meter was expired,”
Hallman said. “What proof do they have?”
Though parking meters in Tempe do not necessarily generate revenue, their purpose is to turnover parking for people coming and going, Salomone said. As a result of construction in the city of Tempe, parking is limited. Therefore, people jam parking meters to get out of paying.
Jamming a parking meter is as easy as covering a coin with tin foil Salomone said. He said citing offenders of jamming meters is virtually impossible, since it just looks like someone is inserting a coin in the meter.
Parking in a broken metered space will result in the same fine as an expired meter, Salomone said, and although the ordinance may be difficult to enforce at first, it will help payback the cost of installation and maintaining meters.
“ [It’s] one of those ordinances that you expect the honest citizen to comply with,” Salomone said. “It’s our best effort.”
