Can I be arrested at the Town Plaza parking lot? There are numerous official-looking traffic signs, barricades and warnings. I counted seven standard stop signs, two stops painted on the pavement and about 500 yellow steel poles. Are traffic signs located on private property enforceable by law or are they merely a suggestion? I regularly roll through all these warnings, as everyone else does, and wonder if I could be ticketed. Sign me, Homer Brakewell
Dont get Action Line started on the Town Plaza parking lot and its not for the higgledy-piggledy traffic controls.
Its for the utter lack of anything green.
Just compare Town Plaza to Walmart or Home Depot. Their parking islands of trees and shrubs provide a verdant break from seas of ugly asphalt.
If you pine (so to speak) for Durangos good ol days of no meddlesome planners requiring landscaping in public places, just take a leisurely stroll across the garden spot that isnt Town Plaza.
But your question is about law enforcement, not horticulture. And thats where we come to the thin yellow line.
Town Plaza is indeed private property. As such, the Durango Police Department cant cite anyone for rolling through a stop sign.
In that regard, the signs are indeed suggestions.
However, if you ignore the suggestions and get in a wreck, the police are fully within their jurisdiction to issue you a ticket for careless driving, according to Rita Warfield, a patrol sergeant.
We can also issue citations for unsafe backing if a car pulls out without looking and hits someone, she said.
Instead of thinking of Town Plazas signs as mere traffic suggestions, lets regard them as really good unfunded mandates.
A couple of Thursdays ago, I was driving past the parking-ticket drop box next to the Durango Post Office where you can conveniently and discreetly pay your debt to society. To my horror, there was a hand-written sign taped over the slot stating out of order. I thought it was a prank, but then a uniformed parking officer approached at the box. I figured he was removing the hoax sign, but no! He placed more tape on it! Which begs the question, just how does a drop box malfunction? Durangolarry
A drop box is a simple but effective device powered only by a force of nature: gravity.
Yet the citys parking enforcement division is not exempt from the laws of physics, and a quick check with emergency dispatch showed no reports of recent gravity outages.
So how can a gravity-fed device be broken?
Amber Blake, the citys multi-modal administrator and a force of nature herself, had the answer.
While local gravitational pull was working just fine, the locking mechanism on the drop box wasnt.
While waiting for a replacement parts to arrive, the city had to halt off-site payments because the parts delivery date wasnt assured.
We didnt want anyone to slip in their payment on the due date, thinking they made the deadline, only to find out that we couldnt access the box for a couple of days, Amber said.
Also, there would be no way to know which payments were made when, unfairly rewarding late-payers with a convenient excuse for tardy checks, she said.
A quick examination of the box this weekend showed it to be in working order, thereby reducing the gravity of the situation.
H H H
Instead of complaints, the Mea Culpa Mailbag has a great idea.
A recent column poked fun of the citys old recycling bins as being nonrecyclable. But loyal reader Andrea Dalla has a solution.
We at Pueblo Community College/Southwest Community Collage are trying to get the entire building to be active in the recycling program. We are in desperate need of those old recycling bins that the city doesnt want back, she writes.
Call Andrea at 749-2297 to donate your old bins. She will even arrange to pick them up.
After which you can say youve bin there, done that.
Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if you decide todays the day to start doing your taxes.
