The thick cobwebs adorning the grimy headlights, the rust mottled on the wheel wells, and the hearty layer of dust and piles of debris accumulated on the car’s hood were telltale signs.
The white Jaguar had been parked on Sequoia Drive for at least two weeks, according to a caller who contacted police to report the nuisance in the east side neighborhood. Throughout Petaluma, vehicle owners continue to flout the city’s three-day limit on street parking, police say.
On Monday, Petaluma’s Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Officer Tim Harmon brushed away leaves from the car’s windshield to stick on a bright green notice of violation of the parking rules. Using chalk, he wrote the date on the tire and scratched a vivid line on the tread and the ground.
He’ll be back in a few days to check the alignment of the marks to see if the car has moved, he said.
After inspecting his handiwork, he tucked the tag into the sun visor of his pickup truck, adding it to a hefty collection of other notices he’ll follow up on in coming days.
“We get numerous complaints every day,” he said.
Locals frustrated by unregistered, abandoned or broken down cars, RVS or trailers cluttering their streets are regularly contacting police to implore them to crack down on the neighborhood blight. In the first seven months of this year, the police received 962 complaints about derelict vehicles, with 1,642 responses to similar complaints logged last year, Lt. Tim Lyons said.
To combat that trend, a dozen officers and volunteers fanned out through the city on July 11, marking 134 vehicles and towing five cars, Harmon said. Combined with the nearly 20 vehicles he’d put notices on the previous day, he spent a busy Monday following up to make sure drivers complied with the notices before issuing citations.
Those tickets run at least $93, and if the vehicle’s owner continues to ignore the regulation, the car can be towed. It’s a tall order to keep up with the constant calls, Harmon said, and the issue doesn’t show any signs of going away.
The department used to conduct more frequent sweeps of the city, though that effort was halted in 2012 because of fiscal constricts, Lyons said. In 2013, the department brought on Harmon full time to get a handle on the issue.
“It was so bad we hired an abandoned vehicle abatement officer to specifically do this because of the number of complaints,” he said. “It’s such a big problem.”
For residents, like Natasha Trau, who runs a business out of her home on 900 block of Ely Boulevard South, the pileup of abandoned vehicles is not only an eyesore – it’s a safety hazard as the family attempts to navigate out of their driveway with the view of the street obscured by RVs.
“It’s like a used car lot,” she said, adding that police promptly respond to their regular calls. “Right now we have this abandoned motor home right outside of our house.”
Other residents, including Dina Solis, took to social media platform NextDoor to echo the sentiment.
“Ely Boulevard between Meadowview and Village East seems to be the place where old, sketchy RVs go to die,” Solis wrote. “We jokingly refer to it as the RV Graveyard.”
Harmon said there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution to the ongoing issue, aside from the potential for the city to install signs to more clearly state the parking restrictions. Often, drivers say they weren’t aware of the parking limitations, he said.
Currently, there’s no date on the books for another sweep of the city, but Harmon spends his days both responding to complaints and searching for vehicles that are out of compliance.
“We try to be proactive,” he said.
(Contact Hannah Beausang at hannah.beausang@arguscourier.com.)
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