Parking tickets set to increase $10

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Hopefully, one of your New Year’s resolutions will be to park legally in Key West because parking fines are set to go up.

City Commissioners are slated to vote Jan. 3 on a new set of parking penalties that will increase fines $10 in most categories. So, if you park longer than you paid for the $20 fine will now be $30, not including an extra $5 surcharge to pay for school crossing guards. Hoping to slip into a designated trolley/tram stop to run in for a quick cup of coffee? That fine is increasing from $30 to $40 with a $5 surcharge.

Some fines won’t change, such parking in a handicapped spot without a permit ($250) because it is already at the legal limit. But parking within 15 feet either side of the centerline of a fire hydrant will increase from $50 to $60 with a whopping $125 crossing guard surcharge. Blocking an active driveway will increase from $20 to $30 with a $15 surcharge. And parking or stopping on a pedestrian sidewalk will cost you $30 plus a $15 surcharge.

City Parking Director John Wilkins said the reason behind the ticket increase was that after the hourly parking meter rates were raised from $2 to $3 in October 2016, the maximum rate to park for the 10 hours the meters are in effect was $30. Some people were choosing to pay the $25 ticket rather than the maximum parking fee.

Plus, the parking fine ordinance had not included the crossing guard surcharges. That additional fee was written in a separate resolution. So, when someone received a $25 ticket, looked up the ordinance and saw the fine was $20, there was understandable confusion. The new ordinance will include all pertinent charges.

As to what the public opinion of the higher fines may be, Wilkins isn’t worried. First of all, he said, if you park legally, you won’t have to deal with fines. But also, most of the tickets written for locals are either for forgetting to display the pay station parking receipt on their dashboard or having an expired residential parking decal. If a driver brings in a legitimate parking receipt for the time the ticket was written, the parking department will cancel the ticket. As for an expired residential parking decal, if the driver comes in and purchases a new $10 decal, the ticket will be forgiven.

“That covers a lot of tickets we write. The rest are tourists who don’t pay and that sort of thing,” Wilkins said.

If the new fines are approved, the city stands to collect an additional $160,000, based on the current collection rate from Oct. 1, 2015, to Sept. 30, 2016. The cost to reprint the ticket forms and reprogram the software is estimated between $3,000 and $5,000.

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