SIMI VALLEY : Examiner to Resolve Parking Disputes
The Simi Valley City Council has agreed to join Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Camarillo in hiring a part-time hearing examiner to decide contested parking-ticket cases.
A hearing examiner is needed because of a new state law that decriminalized parking citations. As of July 1, contested tickets will no longer be heard in Ventura County Municipal Court.
On Monday, the Simi council instructed city staff to work with the neighboring communities to set up a joint system for hearing complaints when a motorist believes that a city parking ticket is not justified.
Representatives of the four cities now must work out the costs, the hearing room location and how a hearing examiner will be hired.
The examiner may be a retired judge or police officer who will spend two or three days a month hearing contested traffic tickets, probably beginning in August, said John R. McMillan, Simi Valley’s general services director.
He said the four cities had 754 citations contested in Municipal Court in 1992. Simi Valley’s cost to participate in the joint hearing program is expected to be less than $5,000 annually, McMillan said.
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