(9/3) The Thurmont Town Council approved an ordinance at their September 1 meeting to prevent abuse of parking meters by those in possession of handicapped stickers or placards.

The ordinance was initially introduced at the commissioners' August 27 meeting to amend existing parking meter regulations.

Part of the stated purpose for the amendment was to prevent those who, under Maryland law, are allowed certain exceptions when using public parking meters ... from exceeding those privileges. The ordinance is actually an amendment to existing parking meter regulations. The ordinance also updated some of the wording in the existing regulations.

Under state ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations, sticker or placard holders may park for free at public meters, and up to twice-the-time-limit for parking at a specific meter. For example, if there is a two-hour parking limit on a meter, a vehicle with a handicapped sticker or placard can be parked in that space for four hours. All others have to remove their vehicles after the two-hour limit has expired.

The changes discussed are not applicable to spaces explicitly marked for handicapped parking.

When the ordinance was introduced, Commissioner Marty Burns said the regulations, as written, seemed to allow those parking under ADA protection to remain after the maximum extended time of four hours by paying the meter. "It's not supposed to be you can park there for an extended period of time... They get double-the-time ... they have to go after four hours."

Burns said the reasoning behind seeking these restrictions was to give the business community a greater turnover of patrons, rather than have a lesser number of individuals tie-up metered spaces by exceeding the time limits.

Regarding general abuse of meter time-limits, Mayor John Kinnaird said there are merchants who, themselves É are abusing the parking limitations by parking their own vehicles at meters during business hours, rather than park elsewhere and leaving those meters for customer-use.

"It mystifies me," the mayor said, adding, "I have some business-people downtown who have called me and complained regularly about their getting parking tickets." He said they tended to view the meters as being for their own personal use.

He said he tells the complainants, "The parking meters are there for your customers, and they say, 'No they're not. They're there for us.' - They (the ticketed merchants) have a different mindset about that."

The commissioners also briefly discussed a potential need for a parking-enforcement officer at some future time but took for formal action regarding a possible hiring.