Photo by Jody Isaackson Jennifer and Shane Olivier appealed the snow removal parking ticket they had been issued April 4 after they had cleared the snow out of the street themselves. The Tracy City Council voted 3-2 to a one-time-only forgiveness of the fine.

TRACY — Tracy Police Chief Jason Lichty says the ordinance is clear when it comes to parking on city streets after a snowfall.

“I can’t make it any clearer,” he told the Tracy City Council Monday night. “No parking from midnight to 6 a.m. (after a heavy snow).”

Most towns in Minnesota, including Tracy, have a snow removal policy that require residents to park their vehicles someplace other than the street so that snow removal can occur unimpeded during certain hours. In Tracy’s case, it’s from midnight until 6 a.m. Any vehicles left on the street during a snow emergency will be ticketed and fined.

But what do you do when you live in town and don’t have enough room for all your vehicles on your driveway when it snows?

That’s the question Shane and Jennifer Olivier faced after the snowfall on April 4. They waited two hours after the snow stopped falling, then cleaned the street in front of their Tracy home so they could park their third car in front of it. With a two-car driveway, they would normally have parked the third one on their yard.

“Now that the ground is soft under the snow, I didn’t want to ruin the ground,” Jennifer Olivier told the city council. They attended Monday meeting after receiving a ticket for parking the car in the street.

“As you can see in the photos we have provided, there was zero snow piled up anywhere (when the plow came through),” she said. “Why do we have to pay for a ticket for snow removal when we already removed the snow?”

Having looked at pictures taken of the cleared street, council members agreed they had done a good job. The Oliviers had cleared the street from in front of their house all the way to the alley.

Lichty, however, reminded the council that parking in the street after a heavy snowfall constituted a violation because it normally interferes with the city clearing the streets.

“I’m afraid of setting a precedent and have everybody wanting to clear their own streets,” council member Jeri Schons said.

She and Mayor Pam Cooreman said they felt that if a novice cleared the street there could be damage done.

“I’m inclined to forgive it this time,” council member Dave Tiegs said as he moved to do so. “But we have to let everybody know this was a one time only deal.”

“We’ll be sure this doesn’t happen again,” Shane Olivier said.

In at 3-2 vote, the council dismissed a snow removal parking ticket.

Cooreman and Schons voted against the motion to forgive the ticket fine.

In other action Monday, Councilman Tony Peterson voted in favor of Daniels serving on the administrator interview committee. Previously, he had told Daniels it might be “awkward” interviewing someone who might become his supervisor.

However, at this meeting, Peterson expressed a change of mind.

“I guess Shane wouldn’t be the only voice on the vote,” Peterson said.

Schons also commented on the situation, saying that she had served on a committee to find a new CEO where she worked and it never bothered her.

The council voted unanimously to appoint Daniels, Schons, Cooreman and EDA Coordinator Jeff Carpenter to the administrator interview committee.

Discussion ensued regarding the length of time it took Cooreman to receive an email from Wendell Sande, administrator search coordinator, with the top candidates and also those that did not make the cut for interviews.

“I didn’t think it should take five days from when he said he was going to send them,” Cooreman said. “He might have had Internet trouble, but he never said anything.”

“We’ve had poor communication from the start,” Peterson said.

“Have we paid him everything, or is there something we can hold back until he gets everything to us?” Schons asked.

“Who’s going to birddog him until he gets everything to us?”

Cooreman and Daniels agreed to stick with it to be sure materials came more efficiently from the search coordinator.