Three distinct, orange-and-white cars have begun roaming the residential streets of west Aurora, but they aren’t taxi cabs, and chances are, you don’t want them stopping in front of your car.
“A lot of people don’t know about this yet, so they come outside a little upset,” said Huston Jones, one of Aurora’s five new parking enforcement officers. “I’ve actually had people come out in the middle of the street and stop me, demanding to know what I’m doing on their block.
“But once I explain that I’m here to enforce the new parking code and get unwanted cars out of their way, they’re very nice.”
On Jan. 1, the city launched , a parking management division that is responsible for establishing and enforcing a public parking plan for the city’s northwest and southwest neighborhoods, predominately west of Chambers Road, where growing retail and residential density is quickly devouring open spaces and street parking.
“Aurora has been developing a plan to manage parking for almost 10 years,” said Robert Ferrin, Aurora’s first parking and mobility manager. “We have never managed our on-street parking before, and that’s become a problem, particularly along the RTD R-Line and in areas where the growth and development is exponential.”
Ferrin joined the city two years ago after years managing the parking program for the City and County of Denver.
“I started early to figure out how all of this would work,” Ferrin said. “This is all brand new for Aurora.”
At its core, is simple: Don’t park in front of fire hydrants and stop signs, don’t have expired registration tags, don’t block your driveway and so on. The city is now issuing $30 tickets for those types of universal violations.
But there are new, regulations: Street parking is time-limited in some areas and requires a permit in others.
One of Park Aurora’s major programs is the , which applies primarily to areas in north and southwest Aurora. Essentially, the registration program guarantees that residents in these increasingly dense communities — where places like the have recently opened — can always find parking in front of or near their homes.
“The (Neighborhood Parking Permit) program was a bit surprising to us because a lot of us didn’t think we needed permits to park in front of our own homes — that we were already in that bad of shape,” said Nadine Caldwell, who has lived in northwest Aurora for 59 years and serves on the board of directors for the Northwest Aurora Neighborhood Organization.
“But something needs to be done,” she said. “It’s very difficult to find a parking place in the Stanley parking lot, and then you have to go out to the street and park, which spills into the neighborhoods.”
People living in one of the nine designated parking districts in Aurora can apply to receive monthly parking permits to show they are authorized to park there. There are currently 1,800 parking permit holders in the city.
The city is considering two more parking districts — one outside the Stanley Marketplace and another west of Peoria Street, around the Anschutz Medical Campus, Ferrin said.
“We want to make sure that residents who have lived in northwest Aurora for decades, and who are now seeing some really great redevelopment happening, are not becoming inundated with shoppers and construction workers and healthcare professionals and so on taking up all the parking outside their homes,” he said. “I think a lot of people are really happy with the way that we’ve really cleaned up the streets already — there’s a place for people to park when they get home and junk cars are getting off the streets.”
Ferrin plans to propose two-hour street parking limits around the Stanley Marketplace and along East Colfax Avenue, in the Aurora Cultural Arts District, to be implemented in fall. Violators of these new rules could get $30 tickets.
Park Aurora can generate money for the city through citations and pay-to-park garages at city-owned facilities like the Hyatt, Iliff Station Garage, Aurora Municipal Center, RTD facilities and transit station bike parking. Ferrin estimates Park Aurora will bring the city about $200,000 in revenue this year, primarily from garage parking pass sales.
The department contracts with five parking enforcement officers who alternate day shifts, driving around the city in decked-out Subaru Imprezas complete with license plate camera readers that know almost automatically if a car is parked somewhere illegally. Dash computer systems beep when violations are recognized, letting officers know to stop and take photos of cars and print out tickets, if necessary.
Ferrin said that as of May 30, the city had issued 6,723 parking citations since Jan. 1. Historically, the city issued about 5,300 tickets per year. Ferrin said the jump is because of more resources in the field.
Jones said he gives out 20 to 40 parking citations per day, and many of them result in warnings.
“They add up really quickly, depending on where you are,” Jones said. “The Costco off Havana is a big area for semi-trucks … Drivers like to pull around back and get some sleep, but that’s against the code so I issued tickets and explained things.
“Then I went back over there yesterday, and there wasn’t one single truck parked there,” he said. “So it’s making a difference. I just try to work with everyone.”
About 25 percent of the citations Jones and his colleagues hand out are warnings. Forty-five percent of recent tickets are given for expired registration.
“We’re not here to make revenue on citations,” Jones said. “Right now, the most important thing is telling people what the compliance is so they can understand it, and then giving them some time to fix whatever they need to fix.”
If you have questions about Park Aurora, call Access Aurora at 303-739-7000.