At his weekly presser this morning, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves hinted that the city may raise its hourly rate for downtown parking.
“Fifty cents an hour is grossly, grossly undercharging for parking in our size cities in the South, it’s not even close,” he told reporters. “Right now we’re 30 minutes free and 50 cents an hour at every city parking space.”
Mayor Reeves was sharing preliminary data from the UWF Haas Center survey of over 5,000 parking customers. The survey will be used as part of the presentation the city’s parking consultant will make to the Pensacola City Council next week.
He gave these data points:
“About three out of 10 people that took the survey believe that the city runs the red lots, which I very much believe, and frankly I thought it would be a little bit lower because of the emails we get.”
“41% of people, when we asked the question, when is the most challenging time to park? And the far and away most challenging time was weekend evenings. Now, you know the city on Sundays, we don’t charge currently. We don’t charge after seven o’clock on Saturdays. So that isn’t a complaint about cost, that’s a complaint about finding parking period.”
“27% say the biggest concern when parking downtown is the limited availability of spaces and then 18% ease of purchase.”
City of Pensacola Downtown Parking Survey Results
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Recycling Saturdays
Mayor Reeves announced a recycling drop-off facility will be available every Saturday starting on Nov. 4 from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. The facility at 2759 N. Palafox Street will accept steel and aluminum cans, two types of plastics, and clean and broken down cardboard (no pizza boxes).
“It won’t be the volume at this point that we were having at the curb, but it certainly won’t be the same contamination, which is why we got here to begin with,” the mayor said.
He asked residents to pre-sort the recyclables. City employees will help upload the vehicles.
For more info, visit cityofpensacolarecycles.com.