Troutdale city council reviews 'outdated' parking enforcement laws

TROUTDALE, Ore. — Unregistered, broken down, and in some cases, abandoned - some Troutdale residents say parked cars are starting to be a problem on city streets.

"I've seen [abandoned cars] where orange stickers have gone on the car and they've still sat there for a month, two months," said Tyler Schaffer, who lives in Troutdale. "It stands out like a sore thumb."

Schaffer says abandoned cars are an ongoing issue in his neighborhood near Hensley Road.

"The folks who live around here, who work every day and need a place to park their car, as opposed to someone storing their vehicle on the road, I think that should take precedent," he said.

Schaffer tells KATU News, it's rare for cars to get towed, but when they do, he says it's almost like a celebratory party among the neighbors.

"It's such a small neighborhood that people celebrate a tow truck coming down to move just so they can get a parking spot," he said.

Glenn Madson says he's dealing with the same problem on his street. He says he wants to move after making multiple complaints to code enforcement and seeing no change.

"Things do end up being abandoned and just being left, and that causes other problems," said Madson.

The city's current law makes it difficult for anyone to take any action.

The current municipal code under Chapter 10 hasn't been changed in 40 years.

Ray Young, Troutdale's City Manager, says that under current law, a car can sit on your street for five days before the city can do anything, and by doing something, the city has to send a letter to the registered owner asking them to move it or it will get towed.

That becomes problematic.

"Quite often people will buy and sell vehicles and not change the title to the owner, so we don't really know who the owner is," said Young at a city council meeting last Tuesday.

Young and the city's Prosecuting Attorney, Scott Leonard, suggested some changes to tighten, clarify, and update the law.

"It became very confusing even to me as someone who looks at laws every day and tries to interpret them," Leonard said at the meeting.

He adds, most of the old code will carry over, but the biggest change will be defining legal parking.

The current code doesn't have a clear definition of what an abandoned car is. Under the update, Leonard says an abandoned car is visibly unusable, or the car is missing tags or plates.

Young says while he plans to keep most of the original code, he's borrowing language of codes from other cities like Portland where it's a complaint-based system.

John Brady, a spokes person for the Portland Bureau of Transportation says they've seen an uptick of abandoned cars in recent years.

In Portland, abandoned cars get an orange sticker, and licensed owners have 24 hours to move it or it will get towed.

"Our abandoned cars inspectors will go out, look at the vehicle, and if it is in fact appears to be abandoned, it will get a 72-hour tow warning, it can be towed within 72 hours," said Brady.

That code applies to cars.

Brady says RVs and trailers can't be parked on the street at all, unless it's for unloading purposes.

Troutdale City Council will reconvene March 12 to look at all the suggested changes.