Union St. Resident Upset With Cars Parked In Front Of His Trash Can

A Union Street resident upset with people parking their vehicles in front of his trash can - preventing the city from picking his trash up - went to Wednesday’s Warsaw Traffic Commission meeting to see if fines could be implemented.
Warsaw Public Works Superintendent Dustin Dillon told the commission that on trash days in neighborhoods, “It makes it an extreme challenge when there are cars parked in front of the trash cans when we’re up to almost a thousand stops a day. We’ve got some residents that have been calling in with habitual neighbors or ... one-way streets parking in front of trash cans and blocking trash cans and creating some issues.”
James Gibson, 320 N. Union St., said that was exactly the reason he was at Wednesday’s meeting.
“I’ve had to call Dustin so many times about issues of people parking in front of my house and blocking my trash can on trash day,” he said. “... I’ve had to call Dustin on numerous times to have somebody come and actually pick up my trash because these people keep blocking it.”
Gibson proposed offenders first be given a way, and then a $25 fine after that.
“That’s the fine you charge currently for illegally parked cars on the street, and you’re only asking people to do this once a week and then an extra day every other week. And the guys carry iPads in their trucks and they take pictures of the situation, so all they would have to do is take a picture of the license plate as well to enforce that law. I just wanted to put that out there as a potential idea and maybe have an actual discussion on it at the next meeting if that’s possible,” he said.
Traffic Administrator Lance Grubbs asked if it could be the same person blocking the trash can every time.
“It varies,” Gibson responded. “I think it is the same person. I think Dustin actually sent them a letter last week about it. But in the past, there’s one specific car that parks around the neighborhood. It’s like a red Grand Am that it depends on the week where they’re parked at, and they will leave their car there for two to three weeks. Not moving that car. I don’t know what’s happened.”
He said they were parked in the spot where it made it really hard for the sanitation workers to put the trash can back, so the workers had to keep leaving it in the street. That causes another safety hazard.
The fact the car sat there for three weeks also might mean the city needs more code enforcement, he said.
Warsaw Police Department Capt. Joel Beam said if there’s a car that’s abandoned to please call the police department. They can tag it and hopefully get the car moved.
Beam said he knows that the trash bins on Main, Fort Wayne and other one-way streets go on the no-parking side of the road. He asked if that was something they could look at for Union Street.
Dillon said they may and they could look at some ideas there. He said it seemed like it’s an isolated area right now, but they’ll see if the letter he sent out helps improve the situation. If they have to, Dillon said they could look at moving the trash cans to the other side of the road, but that would mean residents would have to cross the street with their trash cans.
“We’ll see,” he stated.
Gibson said there’s been a lot of people in the neighborhood moving around lately so there’s been extra cars, but he has a specific spot to put his trash can and “it’s not getting done.” He said he has not had a chance to talk to his neighbors yet because of their work hours.
Beam said he will have code enforcement send a letter. He said he couldn’t find an ordinance violation regarding blocking trash, “except for being extremely rude.”
Gibson said he thought they could talk about that at the commission’s next meeting, which is at 1 p.m. Aug. 6.
Park Ridge SD
Earlier in the meeting on another matter, Dillon said he had some residents complain about a “line of sight” issue with pulling out onto County Farm Road from Park Ridge subdivision.
Pointing out to a photo on a screen, he said there’s a lot of busy distractions at the intersection and the speed limit does change to 40 mph right before there.
“As that housing addition, Park Ridge South, has grown, there’s more traffic coming in and out,” Dillon said. He doesn’t think putting up another sign will help with the line of sight, but said it was more of an awareness issue at this point and something to monitor.
Council President Jack Wilhite said he goes in and out of that subdivision several times a week, and most of the signs there have been moved and that was a big help. Wilhite said the biggest line of sight issue was the hill coming from the north and that would be difficult to take care of. Keeping the signs out of the way would be the best thing, he said.
Beam said he pulled crash data for the past 20 years. There’s been 21 crashes at or near the intersection, with most being car-deer collisions.
“So deer are probably the biggest issue. We have not had any crashes where a view has been obstructed and a crash occurred. Not saying that there could be, but I’m just saying that’s not what it showed,” Beam stated.
When there was a crash there that did not involve a deer, he said it was because somebody rear-ended somebody else’s car going into the subdivision while not paying attention.
The commission voted to not take any action.
Road Work & Parking
Moving on to road work, Dillon said his department does have a lot of striping starting Thursday and into next week. There are a lot of construction projects going on, with Union and Kincaide streets being pretty congested right now with the “big sidewalk project” down there. Dillon said they’re in a crunch to get that completed before the school year starts, which is in early August.
“It’s construction season,” he reminded everyone.
On the downtown Warsaw parking improvements, City Planner Justin Taylor said the city has approved the contract to roll out with that.
“We’re thinking September for a soft launch, so we’ve got training to do. We’ve got equipment to get in, but that will eliminate the shuffling with those changes so we’ve got ordinances to put in place, but just a committee update that we’re moving forward with all that right now,” he said. “There will be changes that will occur.”
Wilhite asked if the new start time for people when they park has been explained.
“Yeah, so you will not have to start a session to park downtown. So, really, you won’t notice the change other than the people that are shuffling. So if you want to stay longer than two hours, you have that option to start a session and extend it, but you don’t have to do that. It’s a really, really good system and it’ll save us a lot of time on data entry and some of the inefficiencies of our current system without really impacting those who are coming downtown just for those quick stops,” Taylor said.
The biggest change, if a person does multiple stops downtown in a day, he said, is that they want to make sure they definitely start a parking session for that second visit so they don’t get a ticket or park in one of the free zones.
“We’re going to have a soft launch where we’ll issue some warnings to enable people to learn that difference,” Taylor said.