Parking fines to double in downtown Camas’ business district

Overstaying your welcome in downtown Camas is about to get a little bit more high priced.

As of July 1, parking fines in the city’s historic downtown business enterprise district will double, leaping from $15 to $30.

The Camas Town Council accredited the maximize during its typical meeting on Monday, but metropolis leaders have been mulling a parking-great boost for much more than two yrs.

The city’s Parking Advisory Committee initial broached the subject in January 2020, amid worries that Camas’ longtime $15 parking high-quality — in spot since at least 1972, in accordance to Camas Police Chief Mitch Lackey — was no extended protecting against people today from violating the city’s parking boundaries in the course of the downtown core.

Lackey extra that the parking fines are not intended to be a profitable company for the metropolis but are, somewhat, a “service created to flip over those downtown parking places for economic expansion.”

“It practically expenses us much more to produce a ticket,” Lackey told the council in May perhaps. “Right now, it (expenses all over) 80 cents to $1, which doesn’t acquire into account the team person’s time, salary or positive aspects. It is not a dollars maker for the city.”

Though the town has billed a $15 parking good because at least the early 1970s, according to Lackey, Camas did not enforce parking when COVID constraints were in spot.

“It was a unique surroundings during a major aspect of the pandemic,” explained the city’s finance director, Cathy Huber Nickerson. “We definitely didn’t do much in the way of parking expenses or assessing penalties.”

The Downtown Camas Association’s executive director despatched see to the town council Monday early morning declaring that though the affiliation and lots of downtown merchants agreed the town should really increase its downtown parking fines, they did not concur with the proposal to double the high-quality.

The affiliation experienced needed to see a tiered parking-wonderful method that would waive the initially violation, demand $15 for a second violation and charge more than double that for subsequent violations.

The association and numerous downtown Camas retailers stress that the fantastic escalating to $30 will discourage would-be downtown guests from returning to Camas just after they receive their 1st ticket.