The Frederick County Council voted 5-2 to approve legislation to prohibit non-electric vehicles from parking in reserved charging spaces on County roads and County owned property.
Not Applicable on Private Property
The ordinance will not apply at the Tesla Superchargers at FSK Mall nor will it apply at the Electrify America chargers at Walmart. The ordinance will only be enforceable at publicly available charging spaces on County owned property. Currently, there are no electric vehicle charging stations that are open to the public on Frederick County owned property.
Council Discussion
The bill had previously been amended to remove the 8,500 lb. weight limit in the definition of a plug-in electric vehicle and to change the requirement that plug-in vehicles must be connected to language that says, “A person may only stop, stand, or park a plug-in vehicle in a plug-in vehicle parking space for the purpose of charging the plug-in vehicle.”
Council Vice President Michael Blue expressed that he did not think the bill was necessary. He noted that at the two public hearings on the bill all of the people who commented were EV drivers and none of them supported the legislation. He explained that he had voted in favor of the amendments because, “I would like the bill to be as good or better than it was, and I think the amendments did help that.”
Rick Harcum, the County’s Chief Administrative Officer said, that the Administration is generally in support of the proposal because it sets the stage for how parking spaces for electric vehicles should be managed on County property in the future.
Harcum said that as of now, there are only five charging stations on County property and that they are “designated by signage for parking of County vehicles, so they are not considered public parking spaces.” He added that the County can currently manage those non-public parking spaces by having DPW put up signs.
County Parks
Councilman Steve McKay asked Harcum about discussions on putting EV charging stations at some of the Frederick County parks. Harcum responded that at the moment, these are just things the County is looking at and that there is no concrete discussion pending to put EV charging stations anywhere. He added that EV charging stations will be coming at some point and that is why the Administration thinks the legislation is a good “table setter” for the future and acknowledged that they “might have to come back at some point in the future and tweak this a little bit if we find that existing signage isn’t sufficient to allow us to manage this the way we want to.”
Councilman Kai Hagen, the sponsor of the bill, said that he thinks the timetable for the transition to electric vehicles is imminent. He added, “This is not intended to be a big deal, but a small way of moving in that direction as we begin to look at all of the different ways in which we can support this transition to electric vehicles.”
Councilman Phil Dacey said that he weighed the public comments pretty heavily. Dacey said he thinks the County legislation is premature and that the issue is something that the state needs to tackle rather than having a patchwork of regulations for each county. “Some counties, you have to plug in, some you don’t. Some vehicles are subject to certain requirements and private property is going to be completely different,” he said.
Councilman Dacey also pointed out that adding more legislation to the Code may not be necessary saying, “Do we want to pass a law when a sign will work?”
Council President M.C. Keegan-Ayer asked the County staff if Parks and Recreation puts up a sign to designate a space to be used for a specific vehicle, for a specific purpose, “does our staff then have the ability to ticket or ask to have that vehicle towed?”
Staff answered, “Yes, the Code section accounts for a $25 civil parking citation and it does allow for towing and impounding of the vehicle.”
Keegan-Ayer wondered if the new legislation would have any greater effect than the existing parking code and pointed out that the bill does not necessarily prescribe that signs have to be posted at EV charging stations on County property.
The penalty in the bill is a Class C offense which is a $100 minimum and $250 maximum fine.
Councilman McKay asked for details on how the proposed ordinance would be enforced vs the current parking sign enforcement, including who would have ticketing authority. Chief Administrative Officer Harcum responded that such details would have to be built-in to future policy, perhaps in future legislation, as public EV charging stations become available on County property. He said, “there’s a fairly large amount of work coming, but it’s not here today.”
Councilwoman Jessica Fitzwater said she supports the intent behind the bill and that she hears, and agrees to a certain extent, the side of the argument that the current signage law could probably do what this is going to accomplish at the moment. She said, “I don’t see this hurting anything and getting something into the code now that starts to set the standard, knowing that we may have to come back to this and revisit as more spots come online.”
The Council voted to adopt the ordinance with five votes in favor and two against.
