Wilmington City Council passes a resolution for an audit of parking tickets, towing and booting in the city.
Councilmember Shané Darby’s resolution encouraging the city to conduct a comprehensive audit of parking tickets, towing, and the booting process before the end of the year passed easily.
“We are getting a lot of calls from constituents, our residents, about the impact of parking tickets, towing and booting," Darby says. "We also know that there is a current lawsuit against the city of Wilmington because we allegedly, it has not been proven yet, but we have some very harmful practices around parking tickets, towing and booting.”
“There is so much more that we can do as a city in regards to really understanding and coming at it with a comprehensive look," Darby adds. 'Having our city auditor really look at the parking tickets, towing and booting process to say how do we improve as a city? How do we make it more equitable, how do we look at these practices and just make them overall better for our constituents.”
Councilmember James Spadola supported the resolution and agrees the city could do even more.
“The approach to parking in this city should be approached with a bit more introspection and humility than I think currently exists. And I think there is room to really reexamine parking entirely.”
Spadola notes the city still enforces parking downtown the way it did 30 years ago.
“We still enforce parking downtown like it was 30 years ago and we have a busy lunch crowd Monday through Friday and then everybody goes home, now it’s flipped," Spadola says. "But we still have two hour max parking spots on weekdays downtown, but over the weekend people can park for free from Friday to Monday.”
Spadola says he is working on his own resolution focused on the future of the parking program and whether it should remain under the Department of Finance, be moved to another, or become its own department.
Councilmember Latisha Bracy also introduced an ordinance to increase the monetary threshold for the city to tow or immobilize a vehicle from $300 to $500.
Another resolution from Darby requesting an assessment of the safety and equity impacts of the City’s red light ticket program failed.
"“I feel like this is really important because we know that a lot of people in our community have been impacted by the red light camera program," Darby says. "And we know that based on the study with the fees and fines report that UD was involved with real researchers, they were able to show and look at the data to show that poor and black and brown people were mostly impacted by these practices that we have around red light cameras and the cost of them and being able to follow this program.”
Others like Councilwoman Maria Cabrera spoke in support of the program, noting the cost should not be overburdensome, but they help to enforce safety.
“Why are people running red lights to begin with? When the light is yellow, slow down," Cabrera says. "Because if that is your child on a scooter, or an elderly person crossing the street, the people that we claim we care so much about, why is it okay to run through a red light? It’s not. And red light cameras have been proven to reduce accidents and to slow things down. And our city, in many areas, Miller Road, Lancaster Avenue, you see stop signs popping up everywhere, more lights, people just are not slowing down.”
