Summit Common Council Creates Unintended Parking Holiday

The parking saga continues.

After twice to pay for the equipment and lot upgrades to officially begin a paid shopper program in Summit, another ordinance which was approved to set the fee schedule back in 2010 is causing problems for the city.

Municipal Court Judge Donald Bogosian is dismissing all parking tickets for overtime issued in the Deforest Avenue shopper lots because an ordinance on the books from November states Summit charges for parking yet has no mechanism in place to collect the fees.

"Once council adopted a fee schedule for paid parking, it was no longer illegal to park for two hours," Councilman Michael Vernotico said. "All it meant was you were supposed to pay for it."

But with no mechanism in place to collect the money, Vernotico says council should have immediately repealed the ordinance establishing the parking rates.

"Here they tried to push something through when no one was watching and without proper vetting and it blew up in their face," Vernotico said.

Vernotico said using Parking Service Manager Rita McNany's estimates that the city issues between nine and 10 parking tickets daily, between 1,500 and 2,000 parking tickets could be dismissed between the end of last year when the ordinance took effect and now costing the city between $40,000 and $50,000 in revenue.

The two-term councilman and mayoral candidate says the problem is the manor in which he feels the parking ordinances were pushed through at the end of 2010 and again in the heat of summer when residents are away on vacation and not able to attend council meetings.

"This is what happens when you don’t have a completely open and transparent process," he said.

Any residents who received an overtime parking ticket in any of three shopper lots on Deforest Avenue since Nov. 11, 2010 when the ordinance took effect may also request a refund. It is unknown if tickets issued on the first level of the Tier Garage are also eligible for dismissal at this time.

The bonding ordinance to pay for the collection mechanism and lot upgrades was most recently defeated 4-3 at the July 12 meeting without a super majority.

"I messed up signing that original ordinance," said Mayor Jordan Glatt. "I didn’t realize when it was passed that there was no enforcement mechnanism. Somebody should have inclucing myself."

Vernotico says he intends to make a motion Aug. 2 to begin the process to repeal the ordinance. It could take until mid September to complete since the ordinance will require a first and second reading as well as a public hearing before council can vote.

"We have no choice," he said. "We have no way to collect. We’d end up providing free parking forever."

Glatt agrees council has only three options.

"Either they gotta repeal the ordinance, you don’t enforce the ordinance, or you put a mechanism to enforce it," he said.

Stay tuned to this story for updates.