Travis County Commssioners Court
February 18, 2003
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 1
Number 1 is a public hearing to discuss proposed order providing that in a prosecution for an offense involving the stopping, standing or parking of an unattended motor vehicle in a restricted traffic zone on property described by section 251.151, Texas transportation code, it is presumed that the registered owner of the vehicle is the person who stopped, stood or parked the vehicle at the time and place the offense occurred. Order authorized by section 251.156 of the Texas transportation code. I move that the public hearing be opened.
>> second.
>> all in favor? Unanimous unanimous. Show commissioner Davis absented absent for the entirety of this meeting.
>> michael [inaudible] with the Travis County sheriff's office. We put this forward for the court's consideration as well as public hearing. That was required under law. Basically to kind of condense this, our current situation is that if someone parks in a zone where no parking signs are posted, a deputy has one of two choices. And that being to simply leave a warning on the car, which we find often is ignored. Secondly is to impound the vehicle, which has significant costs associated to the owner of the vehicle when they come back and have to go hunt down their car. Secondly for the deputy which it could take the next 45 minutes to inventory the vehicle, to wait for the wrecker driver and to do that. The law in the last legislature was change to do allow counties to adopt this in essence as an ordinance so that the presumption has been the city of Austin and most municipalities is that is owner of the vehicle is the person there who would simply write, if you want to call it a parking ticket, and it would be handled accordingly.
>> mike, do you know about how many cases the question of ownership comes into play?
>> this morning I kind of tallied up the situation and what we found in just looking at last year's numbers were probably around 100 cases that we encountered where we had -- since it was questionable on the vehicle was towed to simply remove it as hazard. Again, in most county areas our deputies do everything that they can to be considerate and understand the circumstances. Many times if it's not a hazard, it just really shouldn't be there, again, they will write a warning. And sometimes that does work. The areas that we have problems and some of you may be familiar with are hudson bend road. We have a lot of traffic in the summertime and areas around the lake. Whenever we have a special occasion, we're also seeing some fairly recent problems in schools, around school areas where people are just -- they will have some function and just park anywhere that they seem to feel. Again, we spend a lot of time out there towing cars when we're trying to come with a little bit lesser situation than having their vehicle impounded.
>> would anyone like to give testimony during this public hearing? If so, please come forward.
>> move the public hearing be closed.
>> second.
>> all in favor say aye? Unanimous unanimous. This is posted as an action item today.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM