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Commission backs steeper escalations for repeat parking violators and adds higher penalties for safety breaches
Summary
To target repeat offenders and safety violations, the commission voted to recommend ordinance amendments that raise meter escalation steps and add an escalating schedule for other violations (including residential-permit violations), with higher maximums and longer reset periods for repeat offenses.
The Missoula Parking Commission on April 8 advanced a staff recommendation to increase parking-violation penalties for repeat offenders and to add an escalating penalty scale for non-meter violations, including residential-parking and safety breaches.
Parking Services Director Jody Pilgrim told the board the commission’s meter program already uses a warning for first-meter/first-overtime violations (a $0 citation), which works for most users: "Out of our meter violations last year that were issued, 63% of them were first meter violations," Pilgrim said, and only about 1.5% of those reoffended inside the reset window.
Staff recommended raising the existing meter-escalation steps (currently $0, then $5/$10/$15/$20 at escalating levels) to a higher scale (proposed $0, $10, $20, $30, $40). For other violation categories that today default to a single $20 penalty (for example, permit violations, safety violations and residential violations), staff proposed a similar escalating schedule up to a $100 maximum and recommended changing the reset period to one year for those escalations.
Pilgrim explained the data show a substantively different group of users: "We have 516 vehicles that received more than 1 fifth meter violation last year with 2 vehicles each receiving 31 fifth meter violations in a single calendar year," illustrating that a $20 maximum does not deter habitual noncompliance for some users.
After public comment (retailers and downtown stakeholders urged caution about timing because of national economic uncertainty affecting downtown commerce), the commission passed a motion to approve the recommended ordinance amendments and forward them to city council for consideration. Commissioners discussed timing: some urged council-level timing flexibility to avoid implementing fee changes at a time that might strain downtown businesses; others emphasized separating fines from permit/fee decisions because fines address unsafe behavior and repeat abusers.
The staff recommendation will be transmitted to city council as an amendment to the city ordinance; if council approves an ordinance change, the commission and city will determine an effective date (staff noted councils have set implementation dates in the past to allow businesses to budget and to smooth transitions).
