photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Downtown Lawrence is pictured from the 700 block of Massachusetts Street looking northeast on Jan. 5, 2023.

The City of Lawrence is starting work on a study to transition metered parking violations in downtown Lawrence from being treated like criminal misdemeanor offenses to a civil process.

The city announced the upcoming work in a release Wednesday morning. According to the release, the changes will create a new administrative procedure for municipal parking offenses that replaces the current legal process through Lawrence’s municipal court. Essentially, that transition would mean parking enforcement would be “decriminalized” and people would not be required to appear in court to appeal a citation.

According to the city’s web page for the project, parking control officers with the City of Lawrence have issued around 60,000 municipal court parking violations annually in recent years. But the city contends that the existing fines for parking meter violations, which recently increased from $5 to $10, and other mechanisms currently in place “do not adequately serve to deter habitual parking violators.” Municipal court clerks must process all in-person payments of parking citations, and the city notes that criminal complaints are currently the only recourse for compelling habitual violators to pay outstanding fines.

The project page notes that a civil process would mean arrest warrants would no longer be issued for unpaid parking citations; instead, other noncriminal methods of collecting delinquent payments could be considered, like secondary collections.

As part of the process, the city is working with Dixon Resources Unlimited, a consulting firm specializing in supporting municipal parking and transportation programs, to evaluate the city’s current parking policies and determine what will need to be changed to shift to a civil process.

That work will include evaluating relevant state codes and comparable municipal parking citation processing policies, which could be used to develop recommendations about updates to the municipal code, rates and program enhancements and long-term strategic planning initiatives. The project page also notes the city will conduct an analysis of its current records to determine the total outstanding balance of parking fines owed to the city and what percentage of that amount is made up of habitual offenders.

The results of the parking study will be consolidated into a draft action plan once complete that will lay out the recommended step-by-step policy changes, as well as recommended draft municipal code revisions. The plan will also include recommendations on staffing levels, parking fines and fee adjustments, and an evaluation of solutions to improve citation processing, collection procedures and overall program performance.

To that end, the city is planning to host a pair of community meetings during the first half of August to gather public feedback. The first meeting is set for Wednesday, Aug. 2, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Lawrence Public Library auditorium, 707 Vermont St. The second meeting will take place virtually via Zoom from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 14. The Zoom meeting ID is 829 0479 8250 and the passcode is 623849.

The city also plans to make an online survey available soon to gather more feedback on the proposed changes; it will be available on the city’s website along with more information.