A new fine for cutting through parking lots from one roadway to another was unanimously approved by the Kenai City Council last week.
Starting on July 18, a fine of $75 can be imposed on drivers who leave a roadway and cut through a parking lot to reach another roadway. The move, approved at the June 18 council meeting, comes after months of action to prevent drivers from crossing through the parking lot of the Kenai Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center to access Overland Avenue while bypassing the stoplight at the intersection of the Kenai Spur Highway and Main Street.
Samantha Springer, executive director of the chamber, said during the meeting that she’d been reporting to Kenai’s police and city manager that people had been speeding through the lot for “about a year now.”
“It’s dangerous, the way people have driven through the parking lot,” she said.
Efforts to mitigate the activity, like a barrier installed separately in November and December, a current one-way exit set-up and newly installed speed bumps haven’t prevented people from speeding through the lot.
“I don’t think I’m overreacting or exaggerating,” Springer said. “It’s actually a genuine concern.”
In addition to the new fine, City Manager Terry Eubank said new signage will be installed at the lot. The new speed bumps will also become larger in the coming weeks, before the barricades at the Kenai Spur Highway entrance are removed.
The new fine, Kenai Police Chief Dave Ross said, would work like any citation or infraction the city enforces — a police officer would need to witness the activity and bring that evidence to enforce the law.
Without the new fine, Ross said, there isn’t any other option available to the city to apply a citation to drivers moving dangerously through the lot. The only applicable charge, he said, would be reckless driving, which requires a “very high threshold to charge somebody with.”
“There really isn’t an offense, even if I watch somebody go 20 miles an hour across a parking lot to go from one exit to the other,” he said. “It’s not illegal.”
Under the new law, it is now illegal to use a parking lot to move from one public road to another. Ross said that doesn’t include the use of a parking lot to reach another parking lot. The only area of the city where the activity was discussed to be an issue was at the lot in front of the Kenai chamber.
All six members of the council who were present last week voted in favor of the ordinance. No one spoke in opposition to the legislation during a public hearing that night.
A full recording of the meeting and the text of the ordinance can be found at kenai.city.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
