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Fines for parking violations downtown Warsaw will more than double under ordinances passed unanimously on first reading Tuesday by the city council.
As they are ordinances, the city council has to accept them on a second reading to be approved and take effect.
City Planner Justin Taylor presented the two ordinances to the council. The first one, he explained, deals with the fines that are handed out if someone violates the parking ordinance within the city.
“We were tasked to look at ways to improve the parking situation in downtown. We found that there were three issues that really were causing the most consternation with downtown business owners and visitors to downtown,” he said. “That was lack of consistent enforcement. There was space shuffling. And then the desire to have a more efficient, effective system that could grow with the city.”
With the new apartment building coming downtown, and additional growth on Buffalo Street coming in the near future, Taylor said, “We really needed to hone in on a system that would upgrade our pencil-and-paper system, as well as prevent some of the activities that were happening where somebody would just shuffle one space and then back and forth throughout the day and then just park downtown the entire day.”
The first ordinance is the first piece of that puzzle and creates a more robust fee system, he said.
“We were finding that $10 was just not adequate, enough of a fine to prevent the undesired activity that was occurring. Some individuals would stay in the same spot all day and just pay the fine,” Taylor stated.
Fines of $10 for oversized vehicle parking, parallel and angle parking, parking in specific places and alley parking would increase under the new ordinance to $25 on first offense and then $50 on second and subsequent violations. Parking on private property would go from $25 to $50 on first offense and $100 on second offense. Two-hour parking overtime, which is currently a $10 fine, would go to $25 and then $50 on subsequent violations.
The $10 fines for double parking, improper parking, blocking, no parking area, City Hall lot parking reserved space and City Hall lot parking beyond the two-hour limit would increase to $25 first offense and $50 subsequent violations.
After some discussion by the council on handicapped parking, the ordinance was amended to reflect that the current penalty of $50 for handicapped parking violations would increase to $125 for the first violation and $250 on subsequent violations. The same fines apply for City Hall lot parking handicapped parking violations.
Taylor explained the $250 is pretty standard for the industry so you’ll see that around in other cities. The state minimum for handicapped parking violations is $100, but the city is currently just charging $50. “That’s for somebody who is clearly violating the ADA guidelines in parking in a handicapped spot,” he said.
Another amendment by the council was on the immobilization fee. It would be $150 for the first time and $300 for the second or subsequent violation. A vehicle would be immobilized if it has multiple unpaid parking tickets for an extended amount of time, Taylor explained.
There will be an appeal process for the fines.
After that ordinance was approved on first reading as amended, Taylor then presented the second ordinance.
“So this one goes hand-in-hand with the previous ordinance. So one aspect of what we’re trying to do to get that more desirable parking situation downtown was to raise the fines. The other aspect is to reduce the amount of people that could just shuffle from space to space,” Taylor said. “And what this ordinance does is, it’s designed to inhibit that ability so we would have the establishment of a parking zone in downtown. It would also enable us to enforce parking through a mobile payment app, basically going to a short-term parking metered system that would also enable us to do permits and it would just kind of update our whole process. So right now we’re using pencil and paper ... and it’s just not the most efficient system. So this would update our ability to enforce more rapidly, reduce the amount of manpower as far as inputting data. It’s just a way more streamlined way to enforce parking.”
It would allow visitors to stay downtown longer if they want, but also deter people from staying in the same spot all day every day. Taylor said if a person left their car in the same spot every day all day, it will cost them about $45 per week.
“So there would be a trade-off way to de-incentivize somebody from leaving their car in one spot all day, to increase that turnover and increase visitors’ ability to find ideal parking spaces in downtown,” Taylor stated.
After some questions from the council about how the new parking system would work, city attorney Scott Reust said, “This ordinance has been incredibly hard for Justin and I to work on, and I’ll tell you why. Other communities don’t have the ‘you don’t have to check in to start parking.’ Every other community, as you pull into a spot, you log in to check in to your parking. They may give you your first two hours free, but you are obligated to log in.
“This council has expressed the idea that they don’t want people to have to bother or deal with that if they don’t plan to stay more than two hours. It’s unique. This council is trying to work with our community and say, ‘We like it to be how it kind of used to be, you didn’t have to do anything if you parked here for two hours.’ But, with the technology we have, we have some ability to scan plates and start parking whether you started it or not. But it’s really difficult because this idea of two free hours of parking becomes difficult because you didn’t start a parking session when you came here. So we’re trying to work with the idea that we don’t want people to park somewhere and stay more than two hours unless they plan to pay for more than two hours.”
He said that’s also being balanced with not having to make people start a parking session if they’re not going to be there more than two hours.
“So now we’re weighing the difficulties of we want our cake and to eat it, too. This idea that we don’t want to be unfair to somebody who comes and stays for 30 minutes to do something and comes back later, we’re trying to avoid that,” Reust continued. “But I’ll be honest. From where I’m sitting, I don’t know that it’s always going to work that way.”
He said technology isn’t full proof and they won’t know where every car is every minute. A code enforcement officer is going to drive around and scan plates, but he’s not going to go to every street every five minutes and scan every plate.
Reust said it’s not really a revenue source for the city, but it’s an attempt to discourage parking space shuffling, increase the ability of turnover of the better parking spots that vendors want and also give people an opportunity, if they want to stay more than two hours, that they won’t get a ticket.
Under the 15-page ordinance, fees for on-street and transient parking in designated areas by ordinance are: up to two consecutive hours, free after initially parking in the designated downtown parking zone; third hourly rate, $3 per hour; additional hour(s) rate, $1 per hour; and maximum daily rate, $15 per calendar day.
Parking fees apply only weekdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
After further discussion, the council approved the second ordinance unanimously on first reading.
If the council approves both ordinances on second reading at their next meeting, Taylor was asked after Tuesday’s meeting, when would it all get implemented.
“There’s still a lot of groundwork we have to do, so we would need to put the signs up. So it will be a slow rollout. And then there would be a period of time where we’re issuing warnings. So we’re still planning on doing all the things we talked about initially, we just, as we refined the ordinance, we slid everything back a little bit to start in 2026,” Taylor said.
In other business:
• The council approved a resolution to transfer $700,000 from the general fund to the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory operating fund to assist the fire territory with their operations. Mayor Jeff Grose said the transfer from local income tax dollars has been an annual occurrence and the amount has not changed for many years.
• Grose gave the oath of office to Dan Stevens for the Warsaw Plan Commission.
• Council President Jack Wilhite was unanimously elected by the council to continue serving as president for 2026.
• Grose reminded the council that all of the city’s meetings will be at the Warsaw Police Department Training Facility in February due to the HVAC work by Core Mechanical in the council chambers at City Hall. The common council’s next regular meeting is at 7 p.m. Feb. 2.
