Wherever there are people driving vehicles, there are police officers giving out parking tickets.
However, on the campus of UTM, having too many tickets can and will now cause the Public Safety Office to have the car towed at the owners expense.
“This is not a new policy,” says Lt. Jerry Garcia of UTM Public Safety.
For over a decade, UTM Public Safety has had the policy that if a vehicle has accrued five unpaid parking citations for any reason, they will have the vehicle towed away on the sixth citation.
Some people may say that this is an obscure policy and is not made as public as it should be, however it is listed in Public Safety documents. The Public Safety office has these rules laid out in detail in the Basic Regulations for UTM Parking pamphlet. Additionally, these handouts are available to any student when they visit the Public Safety office.
“This procedure was put into place to make students responsible, to park in their own designated areas, and to be responsible for paying the citations that were issued to them,” Lt. Garcia said. “Once a student or faculty or staff member is placed on the ‘tow list, their name stays on the tow list for the entire semester, and can be towed every time they are found parked illegally; whether the unpaid tickets have been paid or not.”
The primary reasons, aside from five or more unpaid citations, that a car will be towed from the school’s campus are for parking in a fire lane, parking in a disability space or for abandoning the vehicle of an extended length of time. The best way to avoid these problems is to not park a vehicle in or near an area that marked by red or blue paint on the asphalt or side of a road, and only in designated areas.
