Parking Violation Fine Increase

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Since the 1970’s the parking violation fee for the City of Zanesville has been at $10.00, but soon the fine will increase.

The Zanesville Police department noticed within the last few years the amount of parking violation tickets were being written and whether it was cost efficient. According to Chief of Police Tony Coury they held a study of writing parking violation tickets in downtown Zanesville.

“We wrote about 40 tickets in a three or four-day span and we found that we weren’t changing the behaviors of even the people who were getting the tickets,” Chief Coury said. “Even though we wrote 40 of them about four of them were repeat offenders on another day in the same spot, so they were not changing.”

The Zanesville Police Department then started talking to other cities and compared their cost of parking violation fines to Zanesville’s. During that time the department did agree that a two-hour parking violation should not be charged the same as parking in front of a fire hydrant.

“I sat down with all the administrators down at the Zanesville Police Department and we went over each violation that we could have,” Chief Coury said. “So we scaled it from being about $10.00 to being about $25.00 ranging up to $50.00.”

The maximum someone may have to pay for one violation ticket is $100.00 for parking in a fire lane or $250.00 for parking in a handicap parking spot. Zanesville Police Department is currently putting together an ordinance to make the change and will present the changes to Zanesville City Council within the next 30 days.

“We’re not trying to punish people, but change the behaviors of what they are doing,” Chief Coury said. “I believe most people don’t want to break the law. The City of Zanesville offers plenty of free parking downtown. We have a couple free lots and we’ve also advised where they can park and we will not issue any violations.”