Mayor D.C. Reeves continued to pressure private parking lot owners and operators during his weekly press conference, asserting that some are using confusion to make money by misleading drivers.
- He accused the operators of using “predatory practices” by creating confusion over who owns the lot and making money on the parking and any fines while letting the blame fall on the mayor and city.
The mayor reviewed the rules under the new Florida law.
“I want to thank the legislature for passing state Statute 715.075, which went into effect on July 1,” he said. “This is ultimately to put some much-needed additional requirements and accountability as it pertains to allowing parking on private lots.”
New Rules for Private Lots
He laid out the new requirements:
1) The owner or operator of the private parking lot must place signage clearly visible to the people entering that lot that says that this property is not operated by a governmental entity.
2) It should list the rates for the parking charges for violating the rules of the property.
3) The owner/operator should provide a working phone number and an email address to receive questions and complaints.
4) They should provide notice of a 15-minute grace period for camera-operated private lots when the driver pulls into a lot, as long as the driver doesn’t take a parking space.
5) The signage should also have clear rules about their appeal process.
The mayor added the signage may be regulated by the city or county in which the property is located.
“An invoice for the parking charges issued must include the following statement in uppercase: ‘THIS INVOICE IS PRIVATELY ISSUED, IS NOT ISSUED BY A GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY, AND IS NOT SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PENALTIES,’” Mayor Reeves said.
“If you are given an invoice for parking charges, that’s why you hear the word ‘invoice’ not ‘ticket’ because there is no legal ability for a private law owner to give any kind of ticket that the city could give. It must include a method to dispute and appeal the invoice.”
According to the mayor, any appeals must go to the owner/operator first. If drivers want to appeal, they have 10 days after receiving that judgment and can appeal to a neutral third-party adjudicator.
He said his staff is reviewing how to codify the new law and “explore every option we have to hold private lot owners accountable to following these rules.” The mayor added that no private parking lots comply with the rules.
No More Human Shield
“Frankly, I’m so thankful that the state legislature has taken this on this business model that is completely formulated around using the mayor and the city as a human shield,” Mayor Reeves said.
He pointed out that one operator confuses drivers by using a company named “Municipal Parking” to collect its parking invoices.
“This business model thrives and generates revenue by creating confusion and making it seem as if this is coming from the city. Otherwise, you wouldn’t call the ticket ‘municipal parking.’ That is completely an attempt to scare someone into paying a ticket at which they’d have no legal obligation to do so,” said Mayor Reeves.
“As you guys can imagine, we’re already inheriting our own parking changes and in dealing with the changes in that and the anxiety that causes,” he said, “In our survey many months ago, we asked 5,000 people who use parking downtown, does the city control the blue lots or the red lots? 31% of people that use our parking think that we control the red lots, and that’s exactly part and parcel of what this business model is tempting to do.”
Mayor Reeves continued, “Creating the confusion and leaving the problem and the obligation to the mayor or the city—as to any predatory practices—is not fair to the city. It’s not fair to the resident, and frankly, what it leaves us with is when a visitor comes here and parks in our town and gets a ticket in the mail, and they don’t delineate between whether the mayor gave it out or whether a private law gave it out, what they said is, ‘I had a bad time in Pensacola, I got a ticket.’”
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