A.G. Gancarski
On at least one public occasion, Jacksonville’s Chief Administrative Officer, Sam Mousa, groused that it’s cheaper to feed the meter and park on the street than it is to use the city’s parking garages. That, coupled with a focus on parking meter income in general this last month (both in terms of uncollectible debt from parking scofflaws of times gone by) and of money that can’t be collected from broken meters where people have been known to came all day, seems to have been an impetus for a memo from Mousa to city employees encouraging “turnover” and discouraging scofflaws under city employ.
Citing “some” who could “benefit” from the “information,” Mousa reminds Jacksonville civil servants that laws “exist for on-street parking at meters throughout our city” and that long-term parking should be elsewhere.
Mousa takes issue with “feeding the meter,” especially at short-term one-hour parking spaces, even as an ordinance allows such to permit up to three hours in parking.
Some still may want to live on the edge. However, Mousa advises that “the Office of Public Parking has been instructed to increase their monitoring and enforcement of violations. “
For those interested in parking meters in Jacksonville, these are exciting times. For those benefiting from a laissez-faire attitude, however, it is the end of an era.
One comment
Margie Seaman
January 25, 2016 at 11:13 pm
In 2004 Princeton New Jersey installed credit card parking meters that allow you to get a refund on unused time by simply putting the credit card back in the meter when you return to your car. While we are enjoying the revenues from these meters offer why don’t we consider allowing the consumer to participate in the process by upgrading the meters so that consumers can get refunds for unused time (and quarters no longer have to be collected)?
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