First look at new parking bylaw
A new parking bylaw for Invercargill, drafted after a council prosecution was rebuffed in the Invercargill District Court, goes to city councillors today.
If endorsed, it will then be put to public consultation.
The move is fallout from a successful legal challenge to the validity of $40 fines that had been issued on the basis that people had failed to activate parking kiosks as required – by entering their licence plate number – to receive an initial 30 minutes of free parking.
The initial complaint was that the wording on the parking kiosks was unclear.
However, presiding justices of the peace ruled the ticket invalid on separate grounds: that the council’s parking bylaw failed to specify any requirement to activate a parking meter.
A staff report to councillors said the bylaw and ticketing terminology had been found “to be lacking required detail to support appropriate enforcement’’. It also acknowledged that users previously raised a lack of clarity about how the council communicated how, and when, people should pay using the system.
The new bylaw has been designed to clarify the process for users and simplify the ability of parking wardens to observe how long the vehicle has occupied a park.
It specifies that plates must be registered at the time of parking, regardless of whether payment is required.
Other changes for metered parking areas address issues of heavy vehicles causing obstructions and of people with cars that cannot be safely driven leaving them for longer than three days.
The draft bylaw underwent internal and external legal reviews. In the longer term, an integrated strategy for all road users was being developed and would require further development of the parking bylaw.
“This parking strategy will be developed balancing need with cost and encouraging turnover in spaces,’’ the staff report said. The aim would be to decide on the ”most appropriate model and hierarchy of parking”.