Mountain View City Council members approved amendments and clarifications to the city’s controversial 72-hour parking ordinance during the code’s final reading at their Feb. 28 council meeting.
Council members initially supported the changes unanimously at a Feb. 14 council meeting. Amendments to the parking ordinance, also known as Mountain View City Code Section 19.72, included adding the definition of “vehicle” and adding 24-hour no-return and pre-removal notice requirements.
“Vehicle” is now defined as a “device” that can be “propelled, moved, or drawn upon a street or highway” by any property or person, excluding those operated exclusively by human power.
The newly amended code prohibits drivers from parking their vehicles on public streets, alleys, highways and in parking lots for more than three consecutive days, or 72 consecutive hours. A driver parked for more than the allowed time is required to move the vehicle 1,000 feet, or two-tenths of a mile, away from the location it initially occupied. The ordinance also states that drivers cannot return to the parking spot from which they moved for
24 hours.
Administrative guidelines for the 72-hour parking ordinance will be available to the public in two weeks, Councilmember Lucas Ramirez said during last week’s meeting.
Kavita Aiyar, who spoke on behalf of Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation, emphasized the confusion many in the community felt about the amendments and lobbied against their implementation until the administrative guidelines are released.
“We’ve been hearing from the community that after the amendments to the ordinance two weeks ago (that there’s)confusion about exactly what the changes were,” Aiyar said. “Since the administrative guidelines have a timeline, my request is for the police department to put a moratorium on the enforcement of the 72-hour rule until the actual guidelines are publicized both in English and Spanish.”
Although the city is legally allowed to remove vehicles in violation of the 72-hour parking limit under California Vehicle Code Section 22651, city officials are required to give drivers warning notices “conspicuously affixed” to vehicles in violation of the rule that note the vehicle must be moved 1,000 feet from its current location within the next 36 hours and cannot return to the parking spot it currently occupies for 24 hours. Cars in violation of the code will be impounded.
The 72-hour code has been a hot topic in the city, especially after Mountain View implemented the Narrow Streets and Bike Lane ordinances last year, which cracked down on where oversized vehicles, such as RVs, can park.
During public comment at the Feb. 28 meeting, Oscar Mejia, a Mountain View resident living in an RV with his young daughter, said moving the RV 1,000 feet every 72 hours is not only difficult because it interferes with his job, but because it affects his daughter’s school attendance.
“I have a 7-year-old daughter and the bus takes her to school, but we’re not always in the same area,” he said in Spanish. “It’s difficult because it’s also disrupting my daughter’s education.”
