PEEVED PARKERS

Despite spending $18,000 last summer on a car with flashing lights and a GPS that records how long vehicles have been parked in one spot on a city street, Coeur d’Alene’s downtown parking enforcement remains a work in progress.

That work in progress cost Laurie Jaeger and Craig Bunch $15 each for allegedly violating a two-hour parking rule they say was not violated.

Bunch, who addressed the City Council this week, said he got a ticket because he parked at the library for a half-hour, then returned more than two hours later to drop off a book for 15 minutes and found a ticket on his windshield.

A high school student parked nearby also received a parking ticket, Bunch said.

“And he looked very sad,” he said.

The incident prompted Bunch to research the city’s parking ordinance.

Downtown business owner Laurie Jaeger told council members at Tuesday’s council meeting that her husband received a ticket last month for parking twice in the downtown area — once facing north and once facing south on the same block — for a total of 90 minutes, six hours apart.

The city ordinance, and parking signs, prohibit cars from parking for more than two hours in one spot.

Jaeger said her husband referred the ticket to the enforcement officer for Diamond Parking, the city’s vendor, and was directed to the ordinance.

But, Jaeger contends, neither section of the two-part ordinance addressed her husband’s situation.

“Since he didn’t occupy either space (long enough) for time to be expired, the ordinance would not apply,” she said. “And he wasn’t there continually.”

She plans to appeal the ticket.

Bunch’s investigation of the ordinance had the same findings.

“I felt the enforcement did not match the code,” Bunch said. “My contention is I was never there for two hours.”

The way the ordinance was explained to him, Bunch said, anyone who parks for 15 minutes forfeits the rest of the 2 hours, “not only that day, but for 24 hours, which may go into the next day.”

He will pay the ticket, Bunch said.

“That’s fine, if that’s the council’s intent, but please change the sign,” he said. “I’m willing to pay the $15, but I think it hurts these high school kids.”

The city’s parking commission has received similar complaints, said council member Dan English, the council’s liaison to the commission.

“Your situation is not falling on deaf ears,” English said. “It’s a tough situation because parking downtown is a limited resource. It’s valuable.”

The ordinance seeks to be fair to everyone parking in the downtown corridor, he said, including tourists, business owners and their employees.

“They want it to make common sense, but it’s tough,” English said.

Over the last several months the commission has been tweaking a new system that will do a much better job of tracking who is there and how long they’ve been there, English said.

The impetus behind the ordinance is to have people cycle through the parking spaces, giving others a chance to park as well, Mayor Steve Widmyer said.

“I do know there are challenges to that,” Widmyer said. “It’s not a perfect system.”

The first ticket issued by Diamond is a warning and an explanation of the ordinance.

“There are going to be some changes that are made,” Widmyer said. “It’s a work in progress.”