Every week, Bend Downtown Manager Jeff Datwyler gets about a half-dozen calls from people who are confused or upset about official-looking parking tickets that look like they’ve been issued by the city.

In most cases, the citations prompting the calls are real — but they’re not from Diamond Parking Services, the city’s authorized enforcement agency, or the Bend Police Department. Often, the tickets in question are from private parking enforcement and security companies.

And though they might look like tickets handed out by the city for violations on streets, city lots and public property, citations from private companies for parking in private lots or spaces are enforced and handled differently.

When Bend was smaller, officials say, parking ticket confusion wasn’t an issue — fewer people parked downtown and just one company, Diamond Parking, handled all the enforcement.

But the growing local population has provided room for more companies to find a spot in the parking business — and more room for confusion around the tickets they issue.

Now, city officials are taking a closer look at the Bend parking codes and considering updating them to ensure that private parking companies don’t look or act too much like city-authorized parking enforcers.

Datwyler, who works for the city, brought the issue to the Bend City Council recently but said he and others are still in the early stages of researching how other cities regulate private parking enforcement, and how it might change in Bend.

“We’re not trying to shut anyone down or come up with codes that limit private businesses,” he said. “We’re just trying to make sure that things are being done in a legal, legitimate fashion.”

Parking companies

In Bend, the city pays Diamond Parking Services to enforce parking regulations in the downtown area. The company issues tickets on behalf of the city for vehicles that are improperly parked or left for too long in public two-hour spots.

Diamond also works on behalf of private companies in other locations, including The Old Mill District, said Todd Clifford, the company’s operations manager.

For people parked on city streets or in city lots, violating the law usually means getting a ticket, or in the case of repeat offenders, getting multiple tickets, being towed or having a vehicle fitted with an immobilizing clamp called a “boot.” Tickets issued by Diamond for violations on city property note the company’s affiliation with the city of Bend.

Most offenders pay, but a small percentage challenges their tickets with Diamond, and they take their cases to Bend Municipal Court, Datwyler said.

Many of the calls Datwyler gets, however, come from people confused about tickets issued by two other Bend companies — Bend Patrol Services and Municipal Parking Services. Both companies — like others who provide private parking enforcement — are required to be licensed with the city as businesses and post proper notices on sites they enforce.

Nick Thompson, the owner of Bend Patrol Services, said he started his business about three years ago after retiring from work as a police officer.

The company focuses mostly on private security work, but Thompson said his team also does some parking enforcement for a few clients around the city who want to prevent unlawful activity from happening on their property, especially late at night. On those sites, Thompson said the company posts no-parking notices and sometimes issues tickets if people ignore them.

“Lots of them have a warning, and others have an actual small fine attached,” he said. “It’s all done civilly.”

Thompson said the company puts its phone number on all of the tickets, and people who want to contest them can call to explain the situation.

Municipal Parking Services owner Jeremy Faircloth said his company is new to the area, opening just over two months ago. Unlike Bend Patrol Services, Faircloth said Municipal’s primary focus is on private parking lots in the downtown area. Businesses pay the company to patrol their parking spaces, and Faircloth’s team issues $25 tickets, which double if people don’t pay within 15 days.

The idea, Faircloth said, is to give businesses an alternative to just calling in a towing company for people who use up parking spaces but aren’t customers.

“We’re coming in, trying to say, ‘Hey, rather than tow, let us come in, and we’ll monitor your lots,’” he said.

Faircloth said his company also provides a number people can call to contest their tickets.

But for both private companies, the follow-up process for drivers who want to challenge the ticket, or those who simply ignore it, isn’t as clear-cut as the procedure for city-issued tickets.

Thompson said his company doesn’t tow cars, so in many cases, there’s just not much he can do if people don’t pay.

Faircloth said disputes over parking rules or unpaid tickets become the responsibility of the company that hired Municipal Parking Services. Those companies could take drivers to collections to make them pay up, but Faircloth said those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

“We tell the (person who got the ticket) to go talk to the manager … and then they make the decision from there,” he said. “We leave that completely in our customers’ hands.”

Code changes

Datwyler said the private companies have created some confusion because many people in Bend simply aren’t used to dealing with other parking enforcement companies — or being told they can no longer park in spots they’ve used for years. But he said the problem might be furthered by the official-sounding names of the companies or the appearance of the tickets they issue.

“One (company’s citation) has a badge on it, and if you don’t look at it very closely, they have the appearance of being actual city, or government or police department-sanctioned citations,” Datwyler said.

Steve Esselstyn, the Bend Police Department’s community liaison officer, said the confusion over parking companies is part of a bigger issue that his department is working on with other city officials.

With more private parking and security companies popping up, he said changing the city code could help ensure that people can tell the difference between city officers and private security employees.

“We’re trying to find out what other places are doing when it comes to setting guidelines for what security companies look like,” he said.

Datwyler’s presentation to the City Council included a discussion of several parking-related rules, including how enforcement businesses are named and the extent to which they can appear to be associated with the police.

Thompson and Faircloth said they understand the city’s concerns but also need to look and act a bit like police or city-authorized officers to do their jobs.

Bend Patrol Services uses uniformed officers and marked cars for some work.

Municipal Parking Services uses plainclothes workers and unmarked cars but issues official-looking tickets.

“I guess some people could look at us as confusing, but the fact is that we just want to let people know that we’re serious about our job,” Faircloth said.

Datwyler said it will likely be a few months before officials will be ready to make a final presentation to the City Council on any changes to the city code.

“It’s a situation that’s tough for downtown businesses that do have their own private parking, because they can’t just sit there and watch everyone else’s customers take up their valuable parking,” Datwyler said. “I understand both sides, and we’re just trying to make sure what is being done is being done correctly.”