Washington County, city enter parking enforcement agreement

WASHINGTON — The city and county of Washington signed a 28E agreement to enforce recently enacted parking code changes on Tuesday. The arrangement authorizes the county to hold back a vehicle’s registration renewal through the Treasurer’s Office when its parking ticket from the city goes unpaid for at least 90 days.

The move comes around a month after the city changed its parking codes, which previously did not authorize alternative enforcement options like 28E agreements.

“We worked through the Chapter 70 updates with our city ordinance, and it will allow us just another avenue of collecting those unpaid fines,“ Washington Police Chief Jim Lester said at a city council meeting Tuesday night.

Washington County Supervisors approved the agreement at their own meeting Tuesday morning, where Lester said it would only apply to tickets given after mid-September, when the municipal code changes took effect.

Washington County Treasurer Jeff Garrett said the agreement require enough work from his office to justify a $5 administrative fee to the city, but would not otherwise burden department staff.

“What we’ll get from the city are a list of names and either social security or driver's license number, at that point someone from my office will have to go into the DOT system and just add the stop,” he said at the supervisor meeting. “At that point, there’s nothing else to do with it until it’s paid and they send us a release … it’s not a huge amount of work.”

The enforcement mechanism only works for vehicles registered in Washington County, as others would not be under the local system’s jurisdiction. That means there are still some loopholes in the system.

“It would need to be a resident of Washington County at the time the ticket is written,” Garrett said. “And this will only be on renewals. If someone goes out and buys a new vehicle, this does not apply to that.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com