Spartanburg Looking At Stricter Parking Enforcement

Update: September 27th

On Monday night Spartanburg City Council voted to pass a new ordinance, cracking down on those worst parking violators, and those who fail to pay fines.

If you have more than five unpaid tickets the city will put a "boot" on your vehicle which makes it impossible for you to drive away.

You then have 24-hours to pay all of your fines or your car will be impounded. You also have to pay a $100-dollar "boot removal fee".

The city started looking at the plan, because they have yet to collect more than $4,500 dollars in unpaid fines.

Handicapped Parking Fines Increase

The city is also increasing fines for handicapped parking violators. The previous max. fine of $200 is being upped to a minimum fine of $500, with a max. of $1000.

Original Story

An Upstate city says enough is enough. You repeatedly violate the parking rules--get ready to pay.

In downtown Spartanburg, business owners say those hogging spaces for more than the allotted time is taking a toll on them, and it has the city council talking tougher enforcement.

And stricter enforcement may not be a bad idea when you learn how many unpaid parking fines the city has failed to collect on:

4000.

That's since 2005. "7 On Your Side" Wanted To Know, why it took so long to go after the cash?

We asked the city manager, if someone "dropped the ball".

"That's an accumulation of tickets over a 4 or 5 year period," said City Manager Ed Memmott, stressing its not as bad as it sounds.

Although he says his staff recognizes more needs to be done to punish the worst of the delinquent drivers.

When you do the math, at a minimum of $10 a ticket, the city has lost at least $40,000 dollars in revenue over the last five years in unpaid tickets. And in a down economy, that's not something to dismiss.

The city says the goal of increased enforcement isn't all about the money--its about turning over more spots.

However, the city manager says hopefully some of those funds will be recouped.

The enforcement plan calls for the following:

Establish a consistent program of enforcement.

Fines would double if unpaid after 30 days of court date.

Booting fines would grow and towing would increase.

The city says some of the worst violators have up to 30 unpaid tickets.

The city says it's been difficult to enforce the rules, because many people change cars and cities.

We learned the city averages 15 to 20 tickets a day--the majority of those violators along the main street corridor.

Leaders say they have the staff to work on this.

They are also hoping the stricter rules encourage more people to use the city's 4 parking garages.

The plan still has to be drafted into an ordinance, which could be voted on as soon as september.

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Other Cities

This isn't just a Spartanburg problem.

This past spring, "7 On Your Side" broke the story of Greenville's parking woes.

In that investigation, we uncovered the city has a list of 18 of the biggest repeat parking violators.

Together, they had nearly 1,300 unpaid parking fines, totaling more than $29,000 dollars.

All of them had 45 or more violations that the city says were unpaid.

You can see Jonathan Carlson's Investigation at the link to the right of this story.