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Santa Rosa is showing no mercy toward people who abuse disabled parking privileges.
The City Council on Tuesday approved a $1,000 fine for anyone who forges, fakes, or uses someone else’s disabled parking placard to get convenient or free parking they don’t deserve.
Last month the council rejected $750 as too low for such schemers.
At the time, Mayor Ernesto Olivares called the offense “inexcusable” and said he wanted it set even higher, closer to cities like San Francisco and Sacramento, which have fines above $900.
City parking supervisor Toni Guanella obliged and Tuesday returned with the $1,000 fine, the maximum allowable by the 2009 law.
“This greater fine amount is intended to deter and/or penalize the individuals who have chosen to modify and use fraudulent placards to obtain preferential parking which they are not entitled to,” she told the council.
The number of people abusing disabled placards is on the rise, with parking enforcement officers confiscating at least 40 since July, Guanella said.
Some are real permits that have expired. Others are crude fakes. Others have dates painstakingly forged to appear current. Many are permits issued to people who have since died, Guanella said.
The people using them are either cheating the city out of parking revenue or taking up spaces intended only for truly disabled people, she said. Previously, only law enforcement officers could issue criminal citations for the offense, which carries criminal penalties of up to $3,500 for multiple offenses.
But parking enforcement officers are the “only effective mechanism to curtail the abuse,” Guanella said.
The skyrocketing use of disabled placards is related to lax state rules about who can get one, observers say.
Last year, there were 2.4 million disabled placards in the state, the equivalent of 11 percent of the 22 million registered vehicles, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
In Sonoma County, there were nearly 32,000 placards, a number that had grown 165 percent since 1994. The county’s population rose 16 percent over the same period.
Santa Rosa’s fine is the highest of several Northern California cities investigated by the parking department. The council approved the measure 5-0 with no comment.
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I think it should be 25,000.00 for the 1st offense and life for the second offense. That would do it!
BUT IN ALL CASES, they money should go to charity and disabled programs. That keeps it clean.
Meter maids get paid by taxes -so they don’t need the money. Fines go to the right people.
Then there is no reason to be overzealous in enforcement- just fair reasonable decisions.
But nope, Santa Rosa is a non-friendly city with wackos running the city council who now want to run for SUPERVISORs of Sonoma County!?????????
OH YEAH- now the County can elect GORIN and SAWYER to raise parking fees; and create more illegal BIA TAXES county-wide, and then perhaps think of other ways to alienate the community from its leaders.
“free parking they don’t deserve” wow think that could have been rethought a little.
Yes deserve, maybe have a bad heart, can walk, no legs, so many things that could fill why there is a handicap marking sticker.
THE DESERVE IT YES
HOW INSENTIVIVE TO PUT THAT
WHY NOT RAISE THE FEE FOR PARKING IN A HANDICAP SPACE TO $1500.00 oh wait, there must be a state code to that so Santa Rosa the money hungry mongrels had to be more creative.
“What, I don’t get a handicap parking space with my medical marijuana card?”
Boy, do I wish I could give that line more than a single thumbs up. It deserves a gross.
The non-disabled get disabled parking placards while the non-ill get medical marijuana cards. Alice, that Wonderland you live in is beginning to look more like an insane asylum.
What, I don’t get a handicap parking space with my medical marijuana card?
1000 bucks, maybe
1000 hours of community service helping are veterans most like
Sad that we have to regulate morals or consideration for others
some of us park far enough away that if all followed this we would not need blue paint.
then i woke up
I go to Fusion Fitness gym on the westside. Many mornings a lady comes and parks in the disabled spot, with a valid placard, and then goes and works out in the gym, including vigorous aerobic exercises – nothing wrong with her legs. The real abuse is healthy people getting disabled placards for invisible ailments – this makes everyone feel they should do it.
Disabled should mean can’t walk from a regular parking spot!
How do they enforce this fine? Is there paper work you must carry? Or do they just give you a ticket if you don’t look handicapped and tell you to show up in court.
The misuse of handicapped placards has been out of control for at least 20 years.
I used to know a cop who literally boasted that he used one illegally when he needed fast parking.
The focus on enforcement now has nothing to do with protecting the disabled in our communities and everything to do with seeking to extract as much money out of the public as it can.
Gotta keep those public employees in their cushy jobs, everyone. Gotta find that money somehow. And $1000 a pop is a cash cow that greedy, arrogant government cannot resist.
The only reason government is now enforcing the law stringently is because government wants more money.
A $1,000 fine for misuse of a disabled parking placard is excessive, and a poor substitute for enforcement, the lack of which should be corrected.
Worse, though, is abuse by people whose placards are legally obtained. These are people with minor ailments who ask for them from doctors, who dislike playing cop. Most would be healthier for doing a little walking. As the article points out, growth in issues placard permits is all out of proportion to population growth.
This two-way abuse is visible to all. Enforcement shouldn’t be one-sided.