By Lyndsie Ferrell
CREEDE— During the City of Creede’s regular monthly meeting on June 5, board members listened to recommendations made by city Attorney Karen Lintott pertaining to the town’s model traffic code.
In recent weeks, the town has had some issues with people parking in public parking areas for longer than the legal 24-hour period outlined in the model traffic code and asked that Lintott look into revising the document in order to give the town authority to have the vehicles removed.
Lintott emphasized that the way the model traffic code is currently written, it does give authority to the town to have vehicles removed from public parking areas after a period of longer than 24 hours has passed. She further stated that she would be happy to amend the document in order to be more specific if the board wanted her to do so.
The reason the town board wants the code amended is because of a local ATV business that is using one of the larger parking areas to park several ATVs and OHVs, which significantly decreases the amount of public parking for visitors in town. “The town already has the authority to have any vehicles removed after a 24-hour period. I know of several places that could be recommended as a proposed staging area to offer as an alternative,” said Lintott.
“I think the first step would be to contact the person in question and ask them to remove the vehicles from the specified location before amending the model traffic code for this one incident,” said Lintott. In addition to the 24-hour parking amendment that was proposed by the town, Lintott was also looking into a solution that would allow RVs to be placed on private property around town and be used for permanent housing to help with the lack of affordable housing in the area.
Lintott proposed rewriting the code in order to allow RV parking on private property as long as the people residing there followed regulations set forth in an ordinance. “I suggest getting an emergency ordinance in place, charge for a permit that would allow the RV to be used as a residence and other requirements such as emptying the holding tanks on the RVs once a week. This would be a temporary ordinance that would expire in the fall, when we have more time to hammer out the details,” explained Lintott.
By the end of the discussion it was decided by the board to have an emergency ordinance ready for the next meeting in the July and to write a letter to any owners that may have vehicles parked on public parking areas for longer than 24 hours to ask that the vehicles be moved by a chosen date before the town will tow at owner’s expense.