Vehicle Registration and the Patriot Act

Here is a new one I think for discussion.

XYZ Association has a parking lot that is private property for use by owners/residents of the community. There are no garages or carports. The association has 100 units and only 167 parking spaces in the whole community. the board deteremined many years ago to restrict parking to only vehciles driven by residents. there is off-street parking for guests. to control this they set up a registration system whereby the resident must submit DL, registration and insurance information to the association. this has worked well and without much fuss for over 10 years. when the Patriot Act went into effect some owners have stated that by law the association can not ask for copies of this information to prove ownership of the vehicle to be parked in the lot. Proof that the vehicle actually belongs to a legal owner/resident. there is no argument over the registration process in itself it is the asking for a copy of the information.

I am no attorney or even very politically inclined and although I have read the Patriot Act, I can't find anywhere that there is any illegality in the association's requests. the information is kept privately and seen only by the management company and board. copies of the information are filed in each owners lot files and the information is never shared with other members or the public at large.

anyone know of any other situations like this and how have you handled it. We are making accomodation to some extent but if the association abandons the practice there is no real way to ensure that the owners/residents don't abuse the aprking situation by having 3 or 5 vehicles parked in the lots and thereby denying a parking place for other owners/residents.

Have you considered issuing ONE decal to each owner/resident to put on ONE car?

I think you have raised two issues.

First, residents should be able to prove that they own the vehicle that they want to park. Second, you must control the number of vehicles that an owner registers.

We solved these problems by requiring 'proof' of ownership. Our security guard examines the appropriate documents to establish the owner of the vehicle. However, he does not make copies of the documents, nor does he enter specific information (like SSN or DL number) in our database.

Once verified, the guard issues a decal and a record is made of who got the decal and what vehicle it was issued for.

The system has worked well for us for several years.

With registration we do issue the permits to be placed on the car

thank you all. I did not think I was totally off my rocker. I am not a politico for very deliberate reasons but when I read it (OK skimmed it) I did not find anything that even came close to providing a legislative argument against the requests for proof of ownership.