The City of Olympia recently reached out to the Neighborhood Association asking for input on on-street parking in “Zone 2”. The Zone 2 parking district is defined as Capitol Way to Sylvester St and Sid Snyder Ave to the north side of 18th Ave. You can see a map here.
Chelsea Baker, the parking program analyst for the City, stated that Parking Enforcement receives many requests to enforce on-street parking regulations during the legislative session. However, when parking enforcement investigates they often find that vehicles parked on-street have valid on-street residential parking permits. Chelsea noted that Zone 2 has 89 on-street parking spaces and 123 active residential on-street parking permits. This is a much higher ratio of parking permits to on-street parking than is the case in other parking zones.
Chelsea asked to meet with residents to get ideas on how to address this situation. Holly Gadbaw, Dayle Smith, John Saunders, and Laurie Macinnes met with Chelsea, and representatives of Parking Services on November 2. Here are the actions that Parking Services committed to take this year and next after discussing many options with the group:
- Add primary residence as a qualification on the annual permit application and update online documents. Make it BIG and at the TOP.
- Increased vigilance in checking registrations to make sure vehicle registrations match the address.
- We will combine the info on the affidavit with Section 1 and Section 2 so that permit applicants can clearly see all of the rules they’re signing for.
- Parking Services will gather occupancy data during and outside of the legislative session.
- When issuing a ticket, Parking Services will include info about campus visitor parking.
- Change the ordinance to specify a 6 month lease is required in order to obtain a residential permit.
