Ask The City – Why Aren’t Parking Time Limits Enforced?

Your Question:

I went to downtown Laramie to check it out today. I was looking for a lunch place, but when I came back at lunch time there was no parking was available! I noticed that the parked cars were the same ones I saw that morning. Why aren't the time limits for parking enforced? I wanted to try a local place downtown instead of Village Inn. We have a Village Inn at home.

The City's Response:

The downtown parking timed restrictions are enforced under Laramie Municipal code 10-36-110. This is for the Downtown parking district delineated in the ordinance (Basically University to Custer, 5^th to 1^st with some boundary deviance). It is in effect from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. While the signs say “2 hour parallel parking only”, there is no provision to tow for this violation.

Timed parking takes double the amount of enforcement time because a vehicle has to be marked and then returned to after the parking time is allotted. This is lower on the priority because calls handled by Community Service Officers  with “there now” incidents and violations are handled first. These are complaints from citizens with action oriented violations occurring presently. Currently there are 123 individual permit parking districts and 28 “Individual” parking permits contiguous to districts that consume parking enforcement attention as well  as the  “24 hour” violations that are called in on a regular basis.

We enforce the timed parking when we can and have issued 26 citations for that specific violation in the last quarter. This is one of the parking violations almost solely handled by Community Service Officers rather than Police Officers because of the designated return to check requirement that officers rarely can do as they cannot establish a return visit because of call load.

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