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If you take a look at this area, you will see that the grass is gone and it is a • muddy mess (this was true even before they started grading the site for Menards). The erosion was caused by all of the vehicle traffic on this formerly grassy location. Staff visited the site this spring to investigate the vehicles for sale in the ROW and found that the traffic problems associated with that site are tremendous. It is an unsafe area for interested people to pull over and take a look at the vehicles for sale. If they drive up next to the vehicles on the grass, they are contributing to the erosion problem, and if they try to park on the street or highway they are blocking traffic. The same issues arise when residents park vehicles for sale on private property. They may still be contributing to the erosion problem by parking on the landscaped area and may cause safety or visibility problems if they park the vehicles on the corner of their lots. This issue is addressed, to some extent, in our zoning ordinance by prohibiting parking on landscaped areas, but staff believes it is important to address it in the parking section of Chapter 11 as well. Analysis The city has had limited success in resolving these parking issues. Part of the problem is that the zoning department frequently gets the complaint • calls, but we have a limited ability to resolve the problems. The zoning department can try to contact the vehicle owners and ask them to move the vehicles, but we have limited ability to enforce it. On the other hand, the police department has the power to tag the offending vehicles and have them towed. I spoke to Chief Zerwas and he believes that this ordinance would be most effective if the police have the power to tag violators. Therefore, staff is recommending that the parking regulations in Chapter 11 be amended. I have contacted a number of other cities to find out how they deal with the issue of vehicle sales on public and private property. In most of these cities, this issue is a police issue and not a zoning issue. Blaine, Fridley and Mounds View all have essentially the same ordinance. Staff in these cities seem to be happy with this ordinance from both a zoning and a police standpoint. These cities have found the ordinance to be complete and legally sound. I have included a copy for your review. It is staffs opinion that the best way to deal with the sale of vehicles is to address these concerns in the parking regulations in Chapter 11. This way, problem areas can be immediately addressed and corrected by city staff. This ordinance will have no adverse effect on the sale of personal vehicles on private property, but will become a tool to work with properties that have • become safety problems because of the parking location of vehicles for sale. S:\PLANNING\KENDRA\OA90-07.DOC