City to crack down on inoperable vehicles
The tires were flat, the vehicle bodies were rusting and grass had begun to grow through the wheels.
For two years, the two ramshackle vehicles had wasted away on the street in front of Alexandria Kalika’s home in Franklinton before she decided she’d had enough.
“No one was using them, there was no indication that anyone even owned them,” said Kalika, 40, a data analyst. “It wasn’t just, ‘Oh somebody’s in front of my house and hasn’t moved in a day’ — it was years.”
On the advice from nearby residents in her online Nextdoor group, she filed a complaint via Columbus’ online 311 form about the seemingly abandoned vehicles. Within a few weeks, she noticed what appeared to be tickets on the dashboards of the cars, and shortly thereafter her neighbors were outside getting both vehicles running and driving them away.
Though Kalika was uncommonly patient in waiting to report the nuisance, most Columbus residents don’t seem to be so shy when it comes to complaining about seemingly inoperable vehicles sitting on city streets.
Columbus police continue to catch up on a backlog of such complaints after a year in which enforcement was paused on those violations at the outset of the COVID19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Columbus officials are looking to overhaul the city’s enforcement code related to inoperable vehicles to make it more understandable for residents — and to make it easier to enforce parking laws.
The proposed amendments, which were expected to come before the Columbus City Council for a vote on Monday, will redefine an inoperable motor vehicle that may be in the public right of way, thereby improving the ability of police officers to identify, cite and possibly tow such vehicles from the streets, said Robert Ferrin, assistant director of the Columbus Division of Parking Services.
Ferrin added that the changes are also intended to create consistency in how the city enforces illegally parked vehicles on the public right of way, whether they’re operable or not, as well as align its definition of inoperable vehicles with that of Code Enforcement, which handles complaints on private property.
“It’s been a challenge here in Columbus, and that’s like any other large city that deals with folks storing vehicles on the street for long periods of time,” Ferrin said. “This is a quality of life issue, a property value issue and a safety challenge, and we’re trying to solve all three.”
A collaboration between Parking Services, Code Enforcement and the Columbus Division of Police, the proposed changes were introduced in July before council’s public service and transportation committee led by Councilwoman Shayla Favor. A second public meeting was hosted in late September in order to clarify and rework some of the initial suggestions.
“The goal is to ultimately eliminate blight and keep our streets and public right of way safer for our residents,” Favor said during that September meeting.
None of the proposed rule changes affect the procedures of Code Enforcement, which enforces violations of inoperable vehicles visible on private property, said Code Enforcement Administrator Heather Truesdell.
The bulk of the proposed changes relate to how the city will define an inoperable vehicle in the public right of way.
In order to eliminate loopholes for potential violators, the city sought to craft a definition avoiding dollar values and subjective descriptors, instead focusing on observable conditions: is it lacking any wheels or tires? Are windows broken? Is the vehicle damaged to a point that would make it undrivable? Is a valid license plate missing?
City officials are also proposing to reduce the fine for inoperable vehicles on public streets from $89 to $30, and are seeking to increase the amount of time an inoperable car may be on public streets from 48 hours to 72 hours. Both changes would bring the code in line with the 72-hour violation rule that already exists for vehicles that are operable, Ferrin said.
The city’s 311 Service Center receives more than 8,000 complaints about abandoned vehicles a year, according to the city police Impound Unit. In 2019, officers issued 3,713 tickets and towed 1,105 vehicles.
But while the volume of complaints remained steady in 2020, officers only issued 883 tickets and towed 206 vehicles before enforcement was paused because of COVID-19. The city resumed enforcement on March 1, but officers found themselves inundated with parking complaints, said Lt. Ron Kemmerling, of the Columbus police property management section, which oversees the impound lot.