If you live in Pacific Palisades and you’re going away on a trip, beware about leaving your car parked on the street in front of your house. The City of Los Angeles has been enforcing its 72-hour street-parking ordinance with fines and towing. If a resident has parked a vehicle on a public street, it must be moved every 72 hours or be subject to a possible fine and towing, according to Bruce Gillman, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. ’This rule is enforced citywide, and often a citation and/or tow is the result of a neighbor or business calling it in,’ Gillman wrote in an e-mail to the Palisadian-Post. ‘We recommend if people go out of town they secure their vehicle in the driveway or a parking garage. When a car is ticketed and then sits with the citation visible for a few days, it’becomes obvious a 72-hour period has passed, hence the ‘flag’ that the vehicle is now subject to towing.” Haldis Toppel, president of the Marquez Knolls Property Owners Association, provided a vivid example of this enforcement in an e-mail to members of the association. She quoted a’Marquez’Knolls resident’who had’written to her about her car being towed:” ’I have just been to the UK visiting my mother who had a heart attack,’ the resident wrote. ‘Two days before the end of my trip I received a call from my husband, who had gone to Las Vegas for two days, to say he had a call from our house sitter to say our car had been towed from outside our house. A parking ticket arrived on my car and then the car was towed. The incident caused my husband to have to cut his trip short to come to retrieve the car. ’My last two days with my mother were spoiled because I was anxious about the car and angry at what had happened. It took me numerous phone calls to the LAPD from the UK to find out where my car was.’The tow and parking ticket cost us around $350,’ the resident reported.
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