Emily Goodell reports.
YAKIMA, Wash. — The City of Yakima is actively ticketing people who stay too long in spaces with time limits after more than a year with little to no parking enforcement.
City officials said the ordinance has been in place for years, but due to a temporary pause in enforcement initiated by the Yakima City Council during the first year of the pandemic and a subsequent staffing shortage, they’ve been unable to diligently enforce parking rules for about the past 18 months.
“But nothing has changed dramatically, other than we have the parking enforcement person who is back at full strength and we’re where we are enforcing the restrictions as they are intended to be enforced,” city spokesperson Randy Beehler said.
The Downtown Association of Yakima started receiving calls last Wednesday from concerned business owners who noticed their employees were getting $50 tickets for parking all day long in spots with a two-hour limit.
“People had gotten into the practice of understanding that it wasn’t going to be enforced and then all of a sudden were caught by surprise,” DAY executive director Andrew Holt said.
DAY put a message out Friday on their Facebook page to let community members know that if they’re parking downtown and stay longer than the time limit allows, they might be getting a ticket.
Holt said most of the business owners he spoke to were less concerned with the parking limits being enforced than the perceived lack of communication from the city about them renewing their enforcement efforts.
“The business owners and the building owners understand the intent of a parking limit,” Holt said. “I think that some of the concerns are about the way it was rolled out.”
Beehler said the city is not enforcing parking limits as a way to generate revenue; with only one parking enforcement officer to cover the entire city and tickets being $50 each, the amount of money that comes in isn’t even enough to cover the officer’s salary.
“The really important thing to remember is that parking spaces are there to serve businesses,” Beehler said.
Beehler said if an employee or other person is blocking a space all day or for multiple days, that prevents customers from being able to easily access nearby businesses. He said the city has changed the rules several times over the years.
“We’ll have an argument made that the lack of business downtown is because there’s parking restrictions, so we lift the parking time limit restrictions,” Beehler said.
Beehler said sometime later, another argument will be made that the problem with business downtown is that employees are taking up all the parking spaces because there’s no time limit.
“So then we put parking restrictions back on and then we hear the same argument again and again and again,” Beehler said.
Beehler said people who want to be able to park for longer periods of time in those restricted parking spaces without receiving a ticket can purchase a monthly parking pass for about $43 with tax.
However, Beehler said having a parking pass doesn’t guarantee the person will be able to find an open spot. He said the city also limits the number of passes that can be given out each month to about 110, which equates to about 30% of all available spaces in city-owned lots.
Holt said the Downtown Association of Yakima is working with the city and local businesses about communication moving forward.
“We’re just hoping that we can come to a transition where everybody is comfortable, things are flexible and the businesses feel like this is a benefit and not something that’s harming them,” Holt said.
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