Residents being ‘clobbered’ with confusing parking fines: councillor

A Queenstown councillor says he shares locals’ concerns over the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s over-zealous parking enforcement regime as examples continue to pop up.

Councillor Craig Ferguson said parking "just seems to be too much the topic of the moment for my liking".

In the latest example, resident Mike Legge said in May he received a $170 towing charge on top of a parking fine, even though his car was not towed.

He was rushing to get to the Queenstown Memorial Centre to perform in the musical Spamalot so he parked, admittedly illegally, in the Gorge Rd bus park.

When he went to pay his $60 fine, a council officer showed him a towing charge he had not seen on the ticket.

"She rang them and they said, ‘well, we would have towed you but you weren’t there when we came to tow you’.

"I asked for a waiver of that. I said, ‘I’ll pay the other fine, but I didn’t get towed so why should I pay that much money to be not towed?’

"And then they said, as a gesture of goodwill, they were not going to charge me the towing charge, which I thought was funny because why didn’t they just not charge me in the first place?"

Mr Legge said he had also been fined when dropping off his son at Wakatipu High School.

"I stopped at the bus stop for, like, two seconds while he jumped out and got a $40 fine for that.

"I just think it’s ridiculous."

He said it was no wonder many locals did not come to town for fear they would get a parking fine.

Bridesdale resident Trevor Crow was shocked to be issued with a $40 fine at 5.50am one Saturday for the back of his ute draping over, but not blocking, the footpath. His fine was also waived, "but I sort of question the time of the day", he said.

Mountain Scene has also revealed how CCTV cameras are working overtime in the CBD’s Cow Lane. The Cow restaurant co-owner Malcolm Price was fined for driving down the lane and getting stuck behind a truck.

Mr Ferguson said he got calls from transport operators "who are confused about the camera situation, but also you hear the stories of residents and visitors who just pull in for a milli-second and get clobbered".

"That’s something I’m not comfortable with, and that’s just ongoing and a continual frustration.

"I understand the cameras are there for a reason ... but it just seems we have a black and white situation, and we’re not prepared to get into the grey too often."

— Philip Chandler