Juneau Police Department’s parking enforcement vehicles don’t look intimidating at first glance. The three-wheeled Go-4s look like they could roll over if they took too sharp of a turn.
Community Service Officer Nico Burris is one of the officers in charge of parking enforcement downtown using those vehicles.
“It’s kind of like a golf cart on steroids — it goes 40 miles per hour,” he said. “They’re basically custom-built for little patrol-type tasks and they’re pretty well suited to the narrow downtown streets and alleys here in downtown Juneau.”
Soon, Burris and the other officers will be doling out more expensive tickets for vehicles that they catch violating laws in downtown parking facilities. On Monday, the Juneau Assembly voted to increase parking penalties in city-owned garages using a tiered penalty structure.
That’s despite some members like Mayor Beth Weldon, who during an earlier meeting admitted she sometimes pushes the limits of her allotted parking time.
“I’m sure everybody else is very well organized and leaves lots of room between their times that they have to get there, but sometimes my life doesn’t allow that and so I may hit a little bit of a yellow line every once in a while,” she said.
Juneau Parks and Recreation Director George Schaaf said the new structure is aimed at deterring repeat offenders. It’s the first rate hike since 2013.
“What we’re proposing is an escalated fine structure so that we still understand people make mistakes we still issue warnings, but after two or three offenses people should understand what’s going on and we would like to try to get those folks to follow the rules by getting parking permits,” he said.
Starting on Aug. 28, the current $25 ticket for a first parking offense will bump up to $35. If you get two of those tickets, the third one will increase to $100, followed by $200, then $300. This applies to city-owned parking garages and facilities, but on-street parking fines will remain the same at $25 per violation.
Parks and Recreation recently rolled out a new parking system for the downtown area earlier this spring.
The upgrades include new electronic pay stations, security cameras, a parking app and an online permitting system. It also added new cameras on the parking enforcement vehicles that can scan license plate numbers.