Thousands of people are moving into Snohomish County.
Another 308,000 people are projected to be here in the next 20 years.
It’s why places housing is going up across Arlington, Gold Bar, Granite Falls, Lake Stevens, Lynnwood, Marysville and Sultan.
In some places, higher population has created a parking crunch.
Former Street Smarts columnist Lizz Giordano covered the issue in 2019.
But people continue to have conflicts and questions about it.
Then, as now, the regulations for street parking differed depending on the jurisdiction.
Steve Nagygeller recently wrote to The Daily Herald about seeing RVs parked in unincorporated areas of the county “for weeks” with people leaving garbage as well.
Lamoon Cox, who lives outside of Edmonds, said a car was parked along the street for 6 months without moving. Eventually deputies put a warning on the vehicle and it moved for two days only to return and stay again, as well as a landscape company’s trailer gets parked there as well, Cox said.
Manjit Kaur asked about the rules for semi-truck parking on behalf of his brother, who drives one for work. He said his brother parks on a residential street in the Larimers Corner area near Cathcart Way for up to two days. But people complained about the truck despite it not being “on any danger zone,” Kaur wrote.
In 2019, the Snohomish County Council adopted a 12-hour limit within a day for tractor trailers, large construction equipment and other types of vehicles on urban residential streets and adjacent areas outside city limits.
Violations of Snohomish County parking code carry up to a $250 ticket for the vehicle’s registered owner.
The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office has an online form to report a parking or traffic problem at https://snohomishcountywa.gov/1152/Code-Enforcement. It offers three options: chronic and long-term parking violations, chronic or commute hours speeding, and chronic stop sign violations. Anyone filing a report needs to give a name and phone number.
If there is an active incident, people can call 911 or the non-emergency line at 425-407-3999.
Sometimes a vehicle lingers without much choice by its registered owner.
Debby Riehl lives in the North Creek area of Snohomish County. Her partner’s death a few years ago left her with an old RV parked on the street in front of her house.
His heirs didn’t want it and she couldn’t get the sheriff’s office to tow it initially until she got a certificate of abandonment. Then she worked with a deputy who added it and another vehicle left along the street to the list of vehicles to remove. In mid-May she returned from a trip to Puyallup and it was gone.
“I would like to have witnessed the departure,” Riehl wrote to The Daily Herald. “Future Google shots of my house will not feature a decrepit Winnebago.”
Have a question? Call 425-339-3037 or email streetsmarts@heraldnet.com. Please include your first and last name and city of residence.
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