Decatur, AL Parking Rules: Abandoned Vehicles (2026)

Decatur City Code § 22-68 works on two clocks. The first is three days: no one is allowed to park or leave standing on any public street or sidewalk in the city any car, bicycle, automobile, truck, cart, wagon or other vehicle of like kind for a period in excess of three days. The second is twenty-four hours, and it applies to condition rather than time alone: a vehicle that is damaged, wrecked, unlicensed, inoperable, or incapable of being used for its intended purpose cannot be parked, left standing or abandoned on any street, sidewalk, municipally owned parking lot, alley or other public place for more than twenty-four hours. Both prohibitions are declared an offense against the city and a nuisance.

Section 22-69 carves out one exception. A resident can park a vehicle in the street adjacent to the curb in front of his or her premises, when that parking is not otherwise prohibited, provided the vehicle is moved from time to time as convenience directs. The stated purpose of § 22-68 is to prohibit abandoning a vehicle on a public right of way, alley, municipally owned parking lot, sidewalk or other public place.

Removal is handled by § 22-70. When the police department learns that a vehicle has been left on the public streets, alleys, sidewalks or other public place, or in a prohibited area, it can immediately remove the vehicle to a storage place and hold it until the owner establishes ownership and pays the cost of removal, storage and handling. The city is not bound to hold the vehicle for an indefinite and unreasonable time and can sell it as the Code provides.

Private property is covered elsewhere. Section 7-291 adopts the International Property Maintenance Code, 2009 Edition, and rewrites subsection 302.8 to read that no unregistered or inoperable motor vehicle shall be parked, kept, or stored on any premises, and no vehicle shall be in a state of major disassembly, disrepair, or in the process of being stripped or dismantled. Work done inside an approved enclosed structure is excepted. That section names the Community Development Department as the property maintenance inspection department. The nuisance chapter defines an inoperable vehicle in § 16-14, and § 16-13 lets the city abate covered nuisances at the owner's expense, with the cost becoming a lien on the property.