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The in Pierce County first noticed they had a problem when they began receiving numerous complaints about illegal parking. Some drivers were blocking sidewalks, driveways, even mailboxes.

“Parking issues first started to come up several months ago,” Lakewood Police Sgt. Charles Porche told ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio on Friday. “We were getting a lot of complaints in several neighborhoods where vehicles were parked on sidewalks, and they were impeding people in wheelchairs and some of our elderly population who went out for walks and literally had to walk in the street to get around illegally parked vehicles.”

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When the City Attorney’s Office and police started to look at the problem, they found a couple of things. First, there were a number of different fines being imposed by the city, depending on the parking violation. Second, they found the parking fines at that time, between $20 and $30, were not deterring illegal parking at all.

“They just did not seem to be helping, anybody really, solve the problem between the police department and those reporting issues,” Porche said.

Instead, the city came up with a plan to pass an ordinance creating one universal parking fine all over the city, because the status quo just wasn’t working.

“Our ordinance was a $20 fine,” Porche said. “It seemed to have little or no impact as I don’t think a lot of people care about a $20 fine.”

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So, the city attorney and police agreed on a flat rate for all parking violations. The city council then approved the measure which went into effect August 12.

Lakewood police don’t believe the new ordinance will stop all illegal parking in the city but they do believe it will stop most repeat offenders.

James Lynch is a reporter at ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio. You can read more of James’ stories here. Follow James on , or email him here.