City of Walla Walla
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The Parking Enforcement Program of the Police Department is staffed with a single Parking Enforcement Officer. This section is devoted to ensuring the regular movement of vehicles in the downtown core area to assist in the influx and movement of consumer traffic for Walla Walla merchants.
This section not only provides parking enforcement services, but also provides a visible presence for people to seek assistance in the downtown area, and to relay requests for other public safety needs.
Parking Regulations
Section 10.13 of Walla Walla's Municipal Code covers the stopping, standing, and parking of vehicles within city limits.
Downtown Two-hour Parking Zone
The downtown business area has been designated a two-hour free parking zone (Municipal Code 10.13.010). This area, shown with a blue outline in the map above, is marked by signs that are posted on the traffic light poles and elsewhere.
In this zone, once you park on either side of a block (shown as light-orange rectangles in the map above), you may not park in that block again for the rest of the day. For example, if you park in front of Bright’s at 8 a.m., you may not park in the block from 2nd to 1st Avenue — including on the other side of Main Street — until the next day.
The Parking Enforcement Vehicle is equipped with an automatic license plate recognition system, which uses cameras that scan the license plates of parked vehicles as the Parking Enforcement Officer (PEO) drives past. The purchase of this system was approved by City Council at its March 11, 2020 meeting. (View a recording of the March 11, 2020, Council meeting here; the item begins at 24:14 in the recording.)
The plate numbers are time- and date-stamped and then temporarily stored in a database. When the PEO drives through two hours later, the system scans license plates and flags any vehicle that is still parked in the same block.
A vehicle parked in a single block for more than two hours is in violation, and may be cited. Fines are $10 for a first infraction, $30 for a second infraction within 30 days, $50 for a third infraction, and $100 for a fourth and subsequent infractions within that 30-day period.