Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Mountain Brook parking enforcement officer Ellie Hallmark makes her rounds around the city in July.
Lloyd Shelton was having coffee with fellow council member Maretta Ashford in Mountain Brook Village when a police officer came by, marking tires.
Three women took notice, wondering if they needed to move their car to avoid a ticket for overtime parking.
“‘No, we can park here for three hours,’” Shelton recalled one of the three saying. “Maretta and I got tickled. I don’t know that you could milk three hours out of a cup of coffee. But just to see the enforcement arm come by, they all got anxious.”
Mountain Brook could soon have a new tool to address parking violations in its villages. The City Council this summer approved a software subscriber agreement with Park Loyalty for its Enforce Pro enforcement system for parking tickets.
“Implementation will take some time, and we will update the public via our social media and app when we roll it out,” Police Communications Officer Megan Thomas said. “My understanding is that the public will not see a noticeable difference in how the department enforces parking ordinances.”
But it should improve efficiency, officials said.
“We look forward to this new technology as a solution to our complex parking needs,” Thomas said. “Our villages draw many visitors to our community, and we want to provide everyone with a convenient and enjoyable experience while they are here shopping and dining.”
Previously, the city dispatched a parking enforcement officer to drive around the villages, marking tires with chalk along the way. The officer returned and issued a ticket if the vehicle had been in that parking space longer than permitted.
This new system features a license plate recognition system that is mounted on the officer’s vehicle. When the officer drives by, the device reads the license plate and alerts the officer how long a vehicle has stayed in a parking space.
“They’ll be notified through the software, through the system, that that vehicle is over the time limit,” Police Chief Thomas Boulware said. “They’ll be able to issue a ticket at that point. It’ll also have a picture of the vehicle of when it was first seen in that spot and when it’s seen for the second time.”
The Park Loyalty system was initially approved for Lane Parke and other areas in Mountain Brook Village, but it will be used elsewhere too.
“When looking at Lane Parke, we tried to look at it holistically to see how we could improve parking around the whole city,” Boulware said. “One of the ways was to make parking enforcement more efficient and effective. We’re trying to upgrade our processes and our procedures to try to streamline that process and make our parking attendant more effective and more efficient with her time, so that she can get around to all the villages in a more timely manner and hopefully get that higher turnover rate of parking spaces.”
Shelton said the first-year cost for the Park Loyalty software for monitoring parking is $34,390. For years two through five, the cost is $12,600 per year.
