Responding to recent citizen complaints about parking enforcement, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves clarified at his Wednesday press conference that the city operates on a complaint-driven system rather than proactive patrolling. He emphasized that the 24-hour parking ordinance exists to prevent vehicles from being stored on public rights-of-way for extended periods, creating public safety issues.
- “It is a complaint-driven process, period,” Reeves stated firmly. “We have no proactive plan. We don’t have someone just driving around the city—that’s not feasible logistically, it’s not feasible financially, and it’s not feasible under any circumstance that we would be doing that. And we don’t have the bandwidth, nor the labor, nor the time to just be driving around hundreds and hundreds of miles of city-owned road to handle those issues.”
He defended his staff against criticism: “The idea or the impression that I certainly took issue with, not for me, but in defense of our staff who work really hard, and I try to defend them when they are right or wrong. At the end of the day, the buck stops with me. And I wanted to ensure that folks understood these alleged random cases that we’re just going around and patrolling neighborhoods are not the case.”
- Addressing concerns about enforcement seeming overly strict, Reeves explained the necessity of the ordinance, then asked, “What stops anybody from parking every RV or every third or fourth vehicle on the street for weeks at a time? Now people would call us and say, ‘Well, why can’t you get this RV that’s been in front of my house for four months moved?’ And we would say, ‘Well, we don’t have an ordinance that allows it.’”
He challenged critics to provide evidence of unfair enforcement: “If anybody, you want to show us a ticket where you knew nothing about it, never had a warning before, never heard from our staff, and you got a ticket in the neighborhood on a 24 hour and 10 minutes, then reach out to 311 or reach out to our staff.”
Mayor’s Version Disputed
East Hill resident Randy Hamilton started the parking ticket firestorm with Mayor Reeves on Facebook. He posted a comment on this blog to the “East Hill Uproar Over Parking Tickets” post.
He challenges the mayor’s statements regarding the city’s 24-hour parking violation enforcement, claiming the mayor’s narrative about advance warnings is inaccurate.
- The citizen, who owns a conversion van, reports receiving multiple “Overtime Parking” citations without prior warnings for exceeding the 24-hour street parking limit in residential neighborhoods. After confronting a parking ambassador, they learned that vehicles are being chalked citywide at the city’s direction, not just in response to complaints.
The resident disputes the mayor’s assertion that two neighbor complaints triggered the enforcement action. He wrote, “I even went and did a FOIA request on my vehicle and nothing came up.”
Social Media Engagement Strategy
When asked about his active social media presence, Mayor Reeves provided a detailed explanation of his approach to digital communication and why he believes it’s necessary in today’s information landscape.
- “My position on this has been, I think things have changed a lot in the last, I’m going to say five to seven years,” Reeves explained. “And what I noticed, especially early on, and I think the general instances would’ve been, ‘Hey, don’t get on there. Don’t get into conversations back and forth.’ And rarely there’ll be one that comes across as contentious. The vast majority of the time, it’s information.”
The mayor was careful to distinguish between factual corrections and subjective discussions: “I don’t ever get into discussions if someone says they think the mayor’s doing a great job or not a great job; I don’t get into any of that. But what I do think is important for us or a city representative is to make sure that facts are understood.”
- He acknowledged that while people have the right to express opinions about him or city staff. He draws the line at factual inaccuracies: “I try to certainly stay out of that, but when someone says ‘one plus one’s three’ online, here’s the issue that I think has changed in the last five to seven years—it’s incredible how many people take that Facebook comment with no backup. And I’m asked about it five times at a Rotary club, ‘I can’t believe the city’s doing X, Y, and Z.’”
The mayor pointed to data supporting his social media strategy: “Go look at our survey of how many people we actually ask the question every year on the community survey—we say, ‘Where do you get your information about the city?’ And the number one is social media.”
- Reeves characterized his approach as a “necessary evil” or “double-edged sword,” acknowledging the complexities: “Everybody’s got a different position on that. But I do feel the duty that both, whether it’s our PIO staff or city staff, our parks and rec staff, whoever is engaging that, we try to make sure that when we’re talking about facts about one plus one being two, not being three, that it’s important that we try to set that expectation. Then subjectivity and opinion beyond that just is what it is.”
TOP FIVE READS—THURSDAY, JULY 31