A crafty ploy by the Chapala city council is saving motorists from being fined for non-payment of parking meter fees in the downtown area.
Comers-MK Ideas Tech, the joint venture contracted in 2011 to install and operate the city’s paid parking system, has been forced to cease issuing tickets due to intentional omissions in the municipality’s 2014 Ley de Ingresos (Income Law) that took effect on January 1.
A draft of the document applicable for 2014, approved by the city council last August, includes a statement to justify suppression of the table of parking meter fees and fines, citing “prevailing complaints” and the “hardship” they provoke among local inhabitants, tourists and commercial enterprises. The statute was subsequently endorsed by the state legislature and published in the Jalisco state government Gazette under Decree 24694/LC/13.
Comers-MK Ideas Tech has filed for an appeal on the grounds of unconstitutionality in a suit registered with the district administrative tribunal. The move will likely unleash a lengthy legal battle to settle the on-going dispute between the parking meter company and the current administration and quell the public controversy it has engendered.