Council committee presses DOT on staffing, license-plate readers and unified 311 process to revive parking enforcement

Baltimore City Council’s Land Use and Transportation Committee on Oct. 12 held the first in a series of oversight hearings on parking enforcement and the Department of Transportation’s plan to reorganize its Safety Division. Committee Chair Councilman Ryan Dorsey (Third District) led questioning of DOT Director Veronica McBeath and her staff on staffing, technology and enforcement priorities.

Committee members said the topic matters because enforcement has fallen sharply from pre-pandemic levels and because enforcement choices — when and where officers are deployed — shape neighborhood safety, traffic flow and commercial activity across the city.

Director Veronica McBeath told the committee the department is reimagining its Safety Division around three central goals: “to improve public safety, to promote commercial activity, and to ensure smooth traffic flows.” She described a suite of operational changes under consideration and in early deployment: cross-training traffic enforcement officers so they can handle all violation types, adoption of a Salesforce “worker” app to replace manual dispatching, use of license-plate readers (LPRs) to speed enforcement in residential permit zones (RPPs), and moving two separate 311 parking-related service requests into a single service request with one service-level agreement (SLA).

The hearing focused on capacity and timing. McBeath said DOT is increasing hiring: a September hiring blitz filled 27 of 28 TEO (traffic enforcement officer) vacancies and the department plans another recruitment round for 15 Traffic Enforcement Officer I/II positions…