Parking jam

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2003 | 11:36 a.m.

If Associate Pastor James Kruger had a choice, he would have spent Tuesday morning inside the College Park Baptist Church, helping set up the weekly clothing closet and food cupboard for homeless and poor families.

Instead, he spent it much as he has every weekday morning for the past three weeks -- out in the church parking lot, directing cars from neighboring Rancho High School, where construction work and portable classrooms have forced the closure of the student parking lot.

The church agreed to allow students to use its lot during the day, provided the row of spaces closest to the building were left open for staff and visitors, Kruger said.

But students have been double-parking -- in some cases even triple-parking -- in the lot, blocking fire lanes and making turns impossible, Kruger said.

The final straw came when Las Vegas firefighters happened by and noticed the blocked lanes, Kruger said.

"One of the firemen told me if there was a fire at our church they wouldn't be able to get the truck in," Kruger said. "That's when I knew we were putting people at risk if we let things go on the way they were."

Kruger said he called Rancho's front office Tuesday at about 8:30 a.m. and told the staff he would be calling for a tow truck, asking that students be notified. But students say the announcement was not broadcast over the school's address system until just before 11 a.m.

Keith Donald, a senior at Rancho, was in his third period honors Spanish class when he heard that cars parked illegally at the church would be towed. He realized immediately that one of them was probably his 1995 Chrysler LeBaron. Unable to find a legal space on the street Tuesday, Donald said he risked parking in a prohibited section of the lot.

"It was a stupid mistake, and I won't do it again," Donald said. "I guess that's the lesson they were trying to teach me, but I would have learned the lesson even if they had just given me a warning."

He sprinted the tenth of a mile from Rancho to the church parking lot, but there was no sign of his white convertible. It took an after-school trip with his father to the Action Towing lot on Westwood Drive in Las Vegas -- plus $133 -- to get the vehicle back. Nine students had their cars towed from the church lot.

Tim Szymanski, spokesman for the Las Vegas Fire Department, said Kruger did the right thing.

"If we see a violation, it's our duty to point it out, and we encourage the public to report violations as well," Szymanski said. "Blocked fire lanes is an all-too-common problem, and it can mean deadly consequences."

Phillip Bruen, also a senior at Rancho, said he watched Tuesday as his friend's car was loaded onto the towing company's flatbed truck. His friend tried to negotiate the car's release at the scene but the tow truck driver was unyielding, Bruen said.

"The school should have to pay to get the cars out of the tow yard, because it's their fault," Bruen said. "They're the ones who told people to park there in the first place. We were told not park right in front of the church because those spaces were reserved for church people. But no one told us we could get towed until this morning when it was too late."

But Rancho Principal Robert Chesto disagreed, noting that students have been warned repeatedly to use only legal spaces both at the church and in the surrounding neighborhood. The announcement Tuesday morning shouldn't have even been needed, Chesto said.

"Besides us telling them, Pastor Kruger has been out there telling them every single day," Chesto said. "If you park in a fire lane at the Meadows Mall and your car gets towed, the Meadows Mall isn't going to pay for your ticket."

School district officials said they're working on an agreement to lease the church's parking lot for overflow parking, which would then allow school police patrol the property, freeing the pastor from his unofficial duties as traffic officer.

"We're experiencing some growth issues, and we know the problems are going to get worse in the next few months," Chesto said. "We're working on some possible solutions, but in the meantime our kids need to follow the rules."