LITTLE ROCK — When Clarence Harris left his house in the Capitol View neighborhood on Saturday, he found a ticket on the old truck parked in his front yard. Several of his neighbors on the one-block street that dead-ends at Interstate 630 also had tickets for illegally parked cars.
Harris said neither he nor his neighbors knew the citations were coming and there was no phone number on the tickets to ask how they could address them or when they had to move their vehicles.
“They didn’t give us any warning,” he said. “They gave everyone a ticket who was parked on the grass. Even if there was grass growing through the gravel, you got a ticket.”
In the three weeks since an ordinance cracking down on people parking in their front yards went into effect, Little Rock code enforcement officers have issued more than 400 citations.
Some of the residents who received the $50 tickets, like Harris, said they weren’t properly informed about the ordinance, which eliminated a seven-day warning period for residents parking in their front yards and allowed both the homeowner and vehicle owner to be ticketed immediately. The changes went into effect March 8, but several Little Rock City directors said the original ban on parking in front yards went into effect in June 2010, giving residents ample time to learn about the law.
“This is nothing new. The only thing that’s new is officers can now walk up and ticket people,” said at-large City Director Joan Adcock. “If they haven’t been notified, they haven’t been paying attention to the media, to the newspaper or to the TV stations. The neighborhood associations have gotten notices about the ordinance change, too.”
The previous version of the ordinance required people to be home when cited and allowed seven days to move the vehicle before a follow up citation was issued. Adcock said some residents were gaming the system by moving their vehicles when they knew code enforcement would come back to check or pretending not to be home so the citations couldn’t be issued.
The city and individual directors received more than 2,000 phone calls complaining about vehicles parked in yards between the time the original ordinance went into effect and when conversations began in October 2011 to make it easier to enforce the law. The changes will allow the enforcers to ticket cars every day they aren’t moved until the tickets reach $1,000 in fines.
“If people could feel how their neighbors do, they’d understand people ought to be able to live where they can afford to and still have it be nice,” said Ward 6 City Director Doris Wright. “Your neighbors parking in their yards tears up the grass and makes the neighborhood look worse. And some areas don’t have this problem, but people deserve to be able to live in a nice place they can afford.”
Message boards for several neighborhood associations have lit up with comments from residents ticketed over the past three weeks. Some posters were confused about where they are allowed to park, and others said they weren’t aware the ordinance applied to more than just cars.
Concerns also have been raised about where the tickets are being given and whether enforcement efforts are being targeted in the neighborhoods south of Interstate 630 or evenly spread throughout the city.
Andre Bernard, director of Housing and Neighborhood Programs in Little Rock, where code enforcement is a division, said the enforcement officers have been ticketing cars as part of their other daily duties Monday through Friday throughout the entire city.
The department was able to hire 20 new code enforcers, almost doubling the 22-member team, with funding from the recently passed 1 percentage point city sales-tax increase. Some officers now work 10-hour shifts, making it easier to ticket people outside of the standard workday.
The increase also put officers on duty Saturdays, when Bernard said the focus will be a unified effort to sweep neighborhoods and check for vehicles - boats, cars, trailers, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, trucks, campers, golf carts and recreational vehicles - illegally parked in front or side yards.
“We have code officers in every part of the city,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if a neighborhood association has covenants already preventing parking in yards, that’s not going to prevent us from going into those neighborhoods and checking for code violations.”
Bernard said the staff is systematically working its way through the entire city, not targeting any specific neighborhoods.
Because offenders have 30 days to pay their tickets or appear in Pulaski County Environmental Court, the addresses for the tickets given out since March 8 were unavailable. Once people pay those tickets, file appeals or appear in court, the addresses will be available in court records.
Last Saturday was the first full weekend enforcement day, and Bernard said officers focused on the Wakefield neighborhood off of 65th Street and on the Meadow Cliff neighborhood off of South University Boulevard, both of which are in Ward 2.
“I’m getting phone calls from people in my ward who thought this was going to be an enforcement based on complaints and who now believe, since this has passed, that it will be the sole purpose of the code enforcement officers,” said Ward 2 City Director Ken Richardson. “I would like to know what other functions they’re responsible for on weekends, and if this is it, then I’m not sure this is the best use of their time and of taxpayer money.”
Richardson tried to amend the ordinance to exclude streets 24-feet wide and narrower but couldn’t get a second for his motion. He ended up voting in favor of the ordinance change in February, but said Monday that he still had concerns about enforcement.
“I expressed concern then and now because this will disproportionately affect the low- to moderate-income people in our community ... those who don’t have the income or money to put in a driveway or to fix an older car,” he said. “I’m still not convinced that enforcement efforts won’t target them and create a punitive answer for people who need help.”
Residents can go before the Board of Adjustment to petition that their streets be excluded because they’re too narrow or other specific reasons. Individuals can also appeal the tickets in Environmental Court, but inoperable vehicles is not an acceptable reason.
“They can call a scrap-metal dealer, or they can move the car to their backyards, which is allowed under the ordinance,” Adcock said.
Bernard said people can call code-enforcement officers at the city’s dozen alert centers to ask about the specific rules for parking if they need clarification. He said they also can call the zoning department to ask for the requirements of paving a driveway or parking pad.
He also said the staff will revisit the ticket design, which he said does not include a phone number but does include an address for payment, after a few months of enforcement.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/27/2012