Leaders of a group seeking to change how the city issues parking tickets will meet with members of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s staff today.
The Los Angeles Parking Freedom Initiative is seeking to work with Garcetti’s staff to “appropriately change parking enforcement abuses” through administrative means, according to its founder, Steven Vincent.
The group will also urge the City Council to “voluntarily adopt our reform plan,” which includes capping parking fines at $23, Vincent said.
If Garcetti and the City Council do not agree to the group’s demands, it will seek to have them implemented through an initiative that would appear on the March 5 ballot, Vincent said.
Vincent told City News Service the city’s high parking fines and citation practices are “abusive.”
“The lowest ticket on the books right now is $58, and that’s pretty high when you consider, if you’re working eight hours and you’re making the minimum wage, your take home pay is probably around $64,” Vincent said.
“For someone working at minimum wage or low wage, an entire day’s pay to pay for a parking ticket is not a reasonable standard.”
Vincent also said parking enforcement officers operate under a “de facto quota” because the city each year estimates the amount of revenue it would receive from parking fines.
The fine revenue collected by the city should be placed in a special fund, instead of being viewed as expected income that could then be used toward the general operating costs of running the city, he said.
