Knox City Council members considered some changes to penalties associated with street sweeping and parking near a school when they met Tuesday night.
Currently, if a resident violates the existing parking ordinance, they would be subject to a $5 fine for the first and second offense and then a third violation would result in a $20 fine.
Mayor Dennis Estok said the current method is a bit too convoluted and people don’t seem to think much of a $5 fine. To eliminate the need to keep track of how many times an ordinance violation has occurred and to further encourage people to follow the rules, officials proposed shifting the fee to $25 for any violation.
Likewise, if a resident violates the ordinance pertaining to the street sweeping policy they can be charged a $10 fine. After consulting with Street Superintendent Jeff Borg, Mayor Estok said they felt a $25 would be taken a bit more seriously.
In addition to proposing different penalty fees, some new language changes were also recommended. Estok explained that existing wordage authorizes city council members to erect no parking signs, but not any other kind of signs.
He noted that there is an area of Main Street near the middle school that used to be designated as ‘residents only parking.’ Over time, those signs were apparently taken down.
However, after experiencing some issues with congestion in the area blocking peoples’ driveways, the signs were recently re-installed. In order to have a rule on the books to allow that to be done in the future, Estok proposed adding language that permits council members to erect any type of signage.
Members will take those changes under advisement and they will be officially considered at the next Knox City Council meeting.
