Mind your meters: St. John's to look at parking practices after losing court case

The City of St. John's will take a closer look at how it tickets motorists who park in places where there are missing meters.

Coun. Art Puddistersought clarification Monday on what the city does in those situations.

"Right now if people come by and find a meterwhere the head has been removed they can park there we do not issue a ticket," he said to the media following Monday night's weekly public city councilmeeting.

His query had been inspired by a challenge in traffic court by Warren Gibbons.

Gibbons parked in a spot where the meterhead had been removed for maintenancebut reinstalled during the day, resulting in him getting a ticket.

A traffic court judge tossed the ticket, and Puddisterput aquestion to Jason Sinyard, the city's manager ofplanning, development and engineering.

Should the city cover the meterswith missing heads with brightyellow No Parkingbags and just hand out tickets? asked Puddister.

"Our practice hasn't been to bag them and ticket," Sinyardsaid.

"Our parking enforcement staff is working with our legal staff to review that policy and that bylaw to see what's the best course of action moving forward."

Puddister also ask Sinyard and his staff to look into why there are so many missing meterheads.

"There's dozen and dozens of metersdowntown," Puddister said.

"More than I've ever seen before which have been removed so we need to find out why these things are taking place."

Sinyard said parking has just recently been moved to his department's oversight, but he did offer up one reason.

"I know we have some issues in the downtown with meterdamage due to theft, and that's knocked out a lot of meters," he said.

City staff will look into the issue and report back to council with its findings.