The Independence City Council took the first step Monday in reforming its parking regulations, following residents’ concerns expressed late last year, by completing the first reading of an ordinance to clarify regulations and establish better enforcement mechanisms. The Council will complete a second reading and cast a final vote on the ordinance next month.
City Attorney Jack Gatlin, who serves as the city attorney for several cities in Kenton County, called the proposed ordinance “probably one of the most robust parking ordinances that I have seen in Northern Kentucky.”
Conversations about parking regulations began in November after a city resident, Dan Burgey, brought his concerns to the council. Burgey is a volunteer with the Independence Citizens’ Police Academy alumni association and a member of the homeowners association maintenance committee in Independence’s Manor Hill neighborhood. He told the City Council in November that he’d observed issues on city-owned streets in his neighborhood, which he argued met the city’s legal definition of a nuisance and which the HOA has no jurisdiction over.
Specifically, Burgey was worried about abandoned vehicles or vehicles otherwise parked on public streets for long periods of time. The Council deferred to the Police Department to clean up its ordinance in January, and this week’s proposed ordinance, which contains numerous revisions, new language and definitions and enforcement mechanisms, reflects the concern about excessive parking times and abandoned vehicles.
“We wanted to specifically deal with two major things: the difference between overtime parking and abandoned vehicle[s],” said Independence Police Chief Brian Ferayorni. “Our previous ordinance basically said they were one in the same. We all know that a car can park for 72 hours and not be abandoned.”
The new ordinance defines an abandoned vehicle as one that has been left on a city street for more than 72 hours and has either some kind of mechanical deficiency (such as flat tires, leaking fluids, excessive body damage or the like) or has been “left with no intention to move it.”
Residents can leave their vehicles on the road for more than 72 hours if they inform the police department in advance, but only when it’s impossible to park the car in a driveway.
Ferayorni said enforcing the ordinance would be on a complaint basis, but the police would also cite people if they noticed something out on patrol, although he admitted that enforcing parking would likely not be a priority for how officers spent their time.
“If there’s something egregious that we see on patrol, we would enforce it, but we don’t go out of our way to specifically go through every neighborhood looking for these types of things because, honestly, we’re too busy,” Ferayorni said.
“Sometimes a problem arises; as we all know, we try to solve that problem in one part of an ordinance, not realizing that we maybe even created a conflict or haven’t addressed another problem,” said Mayor Chris Reinersman. “So, I like the holistic approach on this one.”
You can read the proposed 17-page ordinance below. Crossed-out sections indicate parts of the old ordinance that would be removed if the new ordinance passed. Underlined portions, on the other hand, are additions.