Key West The Newspaper

I awoke this morning eagerly awaiting the scheduled re-striping of our street (800 block of Thomas) to clearly designate the “Residential” spaces.   But as I looked at the markings on the street laying out the new striping, it became apparent that what had been 7 spaces (presently 5 residential, 2 open) in our section of the block were being remarked for only 6 spaces, and in talking with the crew it was revealed that only half of the new spaces would be residential permit parking and the other half open.

So, the already meager number of spaces, all of which have served quite adequately to hold our cars for years, are being enlarged for some magical reason (we should be encouraging smaller, not larger vehicles) but along the way those of us with stickers will lose not just the one space by super-sizing the spaces but also another by the changing the ratio of sticker/non-sticker spaces.  In other words, for our $10 participation in the new sticker program we will lose 40% of our restricted spaces in this one section of the block alone.

Taken in the larger context, this means that while we have been required to buy into the sticker program, the city is actively diminishing the total number of spaces and lowering the number of spaces protected for the residents.

I can only hope that with the re-marking of the spaces will come vigilant enforcement; by that I mean hourly patrols of our block 24 hours a day.

I can assure you whatever the labor costs for doing this will be returned in ample parking fines!  On a recent weekday mid-morning in walking the 600-700-800 blocks of Thomas Street on the west side alone I counted 18 cars parked illegally, none of which had a ticket on it.  An hour later nothing had changed in either number or in tickets.

All of changes come without any form of consultation, conversation, or notice to the residents about the changes which will greatly diminish available parking for residents.

Randolph Becker
Key West, FL 33040