Last month, the City of Reno's Code Enforcement staff proposed parking code changes, including a possible increase in fees for parking violations.
Nothing is official yet, but Code Enforcement hopes an update to the parking code will help cut back on violations.
The city has not updated its parking code since 1990.
At the moment, updating the code can be a difficult process.
"One of the reasons why it's been unchanged for 30 years is because the fines were actually a part of the ordinance, the parking enforcement ordinance, parking violations and because of that, it's very difficult to go and change ordinances just to change the fines," said Alex Woodley, Director of Parking and Code Enforcement, City of Reno. "So, what we are doing is removing the fines from the ordinance and we're placing it on the fee schedule."Â
Placing fines on the fee schedule would make it easier for the city to make changes or updates each year.
The proposed plan would eliminate outdated rules and increase the fees of 55 different parking violations.
Woodley says that at the moment, the city receives anywhere from 700 to 900 parking complaints per month because the current code does not deter enough people from committing violations.
"When we started reviewing and comparing to other cities, we didn't have to go very far. The city of Sparks, we saw that for their top 10 violations, their average is around $89 where as our average citation is $30 so our hope is to raise that by $20 to make our average $50," said Woodley.
On May 8, the city council will review the proposal again and two weeks later, they will vote on whether or not they want to approve it for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
