Parking rules might change soon for RV and commercial vehicle owners in Saratoga.
Saratoga City Council tasked staff with reworking its local ordinance on parking commercial and recreational vehicles within city limits after the city received 10 complaints in the past two years, saying these vehicles are a safety hazard for drivers. Council didn’t set a timeline for staff to return with a reworked ordinance, intended to clarify what a violation entails.
However, in the last two years there have been no reports of accidents or collisions caused by RVs or commercial vehicles, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Capt. Rich Urena told this newspaper.
Saratoga staff said all code complaints are considered significant, especially those that threaten public safety.
The current rule states that RVs and commercial vehicles cannot be left for 72 hours or more on commercial streets, or between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on residential streets. But in most cases, leaving these vehicles parked isn’t considered a code violation because they are not wide or tall enough.
Urena said at a council meeting last week that most of the time, people will park their trailers or recreational vehicles by their homes and move them nearby to comply with the code.
“It is an issue we’ve seen frequently, where an RV is parked for a long time frame,” Urena said.
This year alone, the Sheriff’s Office received 67 parking complaints in Saratoga, though they included regular passenger vehicles and motorcycles, and Urena said he wasn’t sure how many were related to RVs or commercial vehicles.
Other towns like Los Altos, Campbell, Cupertino and Morgan Hill have updated their parking ordinances to be more restrictive.
Campbell’s ordinance requires RVs parked in residential areas to be moved at least one mile every 72 hours, which is tracked via the odometer. Owners also have to ensure the odometer is not covered or hidden.
Cupertino’s rule is that vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds cannot be parked in residential streets, and “truck trailers shall not park or stand upon any public street.”
Tony Gonzalez, Saratoga’s code compliance officer, said at the council meeting that Mayor Tina Walia placed the issue on the agenda after some residents reached out to her with complaints.
“I have brought this forward because lots of residents have, over the years, talked about this concern and recently there were a few people who had been reaching out to the council,” Walia said at the meeting.
Councilmember Rishi Kumar said he gets “lots of emails and comments from residents,” and he’s “never heard of this as an issue so far.”
After those 10 complaints were made, code enforcement officials with the city responded to the complaints and referred them to the Sheriff’s Department.
