Park illegally … lose your home

I guess we could go on forever about parking in Visitor spots, but the fact remains that unless we have a serious deterrent, we will not succeed.  If you clamp their wheels or put stickers on car windows you may be held responsible (i.e. wheel damage or insurance if the sticker blocked their view and caused an accident whilst driving).  Please correct me if I’m wrong.

The CTTT is almost a toothless tiger and these issues will exist until we get tough on perpetrators.  I said almost because I have been through the process many times with a variety of offenders over several years.  I have presented evidence to the CTTT (photographic & contemporaneous notes) showing offenders parking illegally, some for months on end.  This is after they have ignored the variety of warnings from Security/Building Manager/Strata Manager, and eventually a NTC.

The first stage of hearings with the CTTT is called Negotiation, and if the offending party(s) agree not to park again (after several months of illegally parking) there is no further action taken (i.e. no fine & they get away with it -totally).  Apart from catching them as repeat offender they will get away without penalty (a pardon for their crimes if you like) and the case will be forgotten.

If the offenders persist, the next stage of hearings is with the Adjudicator.  The Adjudicator will impose a fine if he/she considers the perpetrators are still offending (evidence provided as above).  And yes they do impose fines from this point – and whilst we keep hearing about this threatening figure of a $550 fine – the best I’ve seen is a little over $200 for an offence over several years.  Go Figure!

Can you imagine parking your car illegally on the street and having this process in you favour?  Dream on!

If only the penalties were enough to stop owners abusing the visitors car spots.  Our tenants generally pull their heads in when given a little reminder.  It’s the owners who think they are above the “law” (with some owners believing that by laws are only for tenants and not for owners!).

We always say in our reminder notes that parking in the visitors car spots is only allowed with the written permission of the OC.  We do believe that there are very valid reasons for parking in the visitors parking.  Should a unit have to have repairs done by the OC and this resident needs to move furniture and belongings into their locked garage for a time, then this would be a reason for parking in the visitors car spots.  We have also held the view that those moving in and out of a unit should be allowed to park there during the couple of days it takes to sort things out (we have all been there, what a pain it is to move, packing boxes everywhere, stuff sorted in the garage etc).  And I could think of other valid reasons that a resident would need and would be granted permission to park.

The problem is, they want to park when they want to and for whatever reason. Whether they have more cars than garages, want to use their garage for some other reason (storage etc), or they want to hang their washing in there on a rainy day so want to park in visitors spots while it dries.  And if it were allowed, every single one of use would use the visitors car spots (there is one visitors spot for every 5 units).  Even I would want to use one if I could.

We notify the parking offenders that they are not only parking in visitors car parks (one by law), they are stopping an area of common property from being used as intended (as visitors car parking – another by law) and as the car parks are infact grass, that is parking on a lawn or garden, and this causes damage to common property (thats another couple of by laws there).

When we last had an uprising in this complex, where some owners wanted there to be a change to allow parking in the visitors car parks, the EC suggested that it would only be fair to ask those who had been in the complex since year dot to have first “dibs” on the visitors car parks.  There was a shriek of horror from the few who suggested this as they had only moved in recently.  They wanted the extra car parking, but they didn’t want anyone else to have it.  So it wasn’t changed.