Some Parking Officers No Longer Leave Their Mark

Chalk it up to progress.

That little white mark left on your car tires by parking-enforcement officers in Ventura could become a thing of the past, if an experimental program in the downtown area yields good results, said Lt. Carl Handy, a Ventura Police Department spokesman.

Traditionally, parking-enforcement officers have used a chalk-tipped stick to mark tires and time a driver’s tenure in a parking space. Drivers could check their tires and, if free of the tell-tale chalk mark, assume the officer had not yet visited.

No more.

By punching a license plate number into their hand-held computers, enforcement officers can keep track of how long a car stays in a parking space, Handy said. If the computer shows a car has overstayed its welcome, the driver gets a ticket.

“We’re trying it out in certain areas right now, like in the downtown lots,” Handy said. “It’s just an experiment to see how effective it will be. We don’t know if it will be permanent.”

Although drivers may miss those little white warning signs, enforcement officers (don’t call them meter maids, Handy said--there are no meters and they are not all women) stand to gain from the switch.

“Believe it or not, they get injuries from banging on tires all day--they get carpal tunnel syndrome,” Handy said. “So this may be a good change for them.”

Officials actually purchased the department’s four hand-held computers about 10 years ago for $3,000 to $4,000 each.

“We’ve been using them all this time, just not for that particular function,” said Lt. Steve Bowman. “Up until now, they’ve just been used for issuing the tickets after marking.”

Ventura has the only police department in the county using the hand-held computers, probably because parking limits are rare elsewhere.