A RUSSELL Island man with a disability who copped nine parking tickets in six weeks says council has not provided enough parking at the Weinam Creek ferry terminal.
George Kattau found three parking infringement notices under his car’s windscreen wiper and six in the mail for parking in an area that was not a marked bay.
He said Redland City Council had failed in its obligation to provide enough parking for holders of disability permits during the just finished upgrade of the Weinam Creek bus station.
“People in council don’t know what it is like to be disabled,” he said.
Dated from April 15 to May 27, the fines were issued when construction was underway and parts of the car park were fenced off.
Mr Kattau’s carer Jan, who asked for her surname to be withheld, parked against a fence adjacent to an unlimited parking area.
”There was space for two cars,” she said. “It was next to an area with 13 parks that had no limit so someone could park there for two years.”
“There was no signage saying there was no parking, or no standing so I thought I could park there.”
Jan said they had been fined twice for parking in a loading zone in November when she struggled to find parking that was accessible to the ferry for Mr Kattau, who is in a wheelchair.
The fines were waived by council, who wrote they would not disregard any more instances of the same offence.
Jan said she had avoided parking in a loading zone after those tickets.
Thinking the latest fines put under the wiper were issued in error, Jan spoke to council officials.
“After I got the first notices, I wanted to explain to council where I had parked, but then I started to get infringements in the post as well.”
Council has since written to Mr Kattau of their intention to prosecute if the fines are not paid.
A council spokesperson said the tickets were for parking not in a marked bay and in a “potentially dangerous place”.
“There is signage as you enter the car park informing drivers to park in marked bays,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said council had kept the same number of disability spaces during Translink’s bus station upgrade.
“While there was a sympathetic approach was taken to general parking during construction, efforts were made to enforce legal parking in these disabled and adjoining emergency bays and to ensure public safety where cars were parked illegally preventing buses turning, obscured from view, blocking safe pedestrian access or impacting on construction of parking,” the spokesperson said.
