(WYDaily file photo)
Kim Perry isn’t your average Williamsburg police officer.
As the city’s sole parking enforcement officer, she’s written most of the parking tickets for the nearly 4,000 parking violations in the city last year. Most days between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., Perry can be found walking city streets and lots, looking for cars parked illegally.
The busiest time of the year for parking tickets is September, when late-summer tourists are in town and college students are moving in.
But the year’s busiest time will soon become a little less busy for Perry. In less than a month, the police department will be adding three new parking enforcement officers to its roster to crack down on illegal parking.
The department is adding two part-time positions, and filling one more part-time position to share the load with Perry, said Williamsburg Police Chief Sean Dunn. Funding for the new positions was made available in the department budget through annual payroll savings.
“It’s going to be a pretty big change,” Dunn said. “We plan on staffing officers so that we’re taking care of parking issues day and night in Williamsburg. We do need to be doing a better job with enforcement.”
Some of the changes came as a result of residents’ complaints about the current state of parking in Williamsburg, Dunn said.
In the last 12 months, Perry wrote parking tickets for nearly 4,000 violations, ranging from parking in front of fire hydrants and blocking sidewalks to staying in parking areas for too long, according to data provided by the Williamsburg Police Department.
“We’re getting three others to come in and pick up the slack,” Perry said of the new hires.
Nearly three in four parking tickets are written cars parking in lots for too long a time period. Most timed parking spaces in the downtown area are limited to two hours, but the time limit becomes one hour near Merchants Square. Downtown Williamsburg has an equal number of one-hour timed parking lots, two-hour timed parking lots, the $1 hourly Prince George Street parking garage, and a $1 hourly pay parking lot, according to the city’s website for parking.
The next most common parking violation is for city residents parking their cars without residential parking permits. Nearly one in eight parking violations stem from a driver’s failure to display a $5 parking permit.
Fines and fees from parking violations are paid directly to the city’s general fund, according to Dunn. The city’s general fund pays for city government, education, and the police department among other things.
The police department is also in the works to add one additional license plate reader to its parking enforcement operations. Dunn said the license plate readers will allow parking enforcement officers to more efficiently administer the city’s parking ordinances.
License plate readers are cameras typically attached to police vehicles that use computer software to read license plates. Within milliseconds of reading a license plate, the machine compares the plate to a list of registered vehicles or vehicles associated with a crime, according to a license plate reader manufacturer’s website.
For nearly 20 years, privacy concerns have arisen nationwide about license plate readers as many police departments retained the photographs of millions of license plates for an indefinite period of time.
“Automated License Plate Readers present a real threat to Virginians’ privacy,” Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said in a press release. “Anyone who believes this technology isn’t a problem needs to understand its potential use as a tool for mass and routine tracking and surveillance.”
Dunn said the Williamsburg Police Department will strike a balance between public safety and privacy concerns by only retaining information from the license plate readers for one month, unless the information is necessary for a criminal investigation.
Under the new enforcement program, drivers violating the city’s parking laws will be caught, Dunn said.
We moved from one full time position to one part time position and a 2nd part time position which was not filled. We are adding two part time positions and filling the previously unfilled position bringing our total to four part time parking enforcement officer positions.
“We’re stepping up our enforcement significantly,” Dunn said. “We are quadrupling our enforcement capacity. We plan to be very proactive of all hours of the day and night, including the weekends.”
Do you have parking tickets in the City of Williamsburg or the College of William and Mary? Can you afford to pay them? We want to hear from you. Send us your story at [email protected].
