Reservations about public parking

Consider, if you will, the parking space.

Pretty standard fare. Two diagonal white lines separated 9 or 10 feet apart, creating a rectangular box for a vehicle to sit its keister.

I wonder who invented the parking space. How did that come about? A Model T rolled off the line, and someone said, “Park it over there, between those two white stripes.”​

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“What’s ‘park’?”

Many years ago at the Chronicle, I came across some very interesting information about the Lecanto Government Building parking lot. Seems the county had sidestepped its own regulations to pave 9-foot-wide spaces instead of 10 feet as the code called for.

Of course, I wrote about it (probably used the same lede as today’s blog), making sure to note the irony of the county using a loophole it would never allow any developer to use to stripe narrow parking spaces for a government office building frequented mostly by people in wide construction trucks who are there for permits.

The county administrator, who had not been here when this fiasco was dreamed up, offered to take his public works crew out there on a Saturday morning and restripe the lot. They decided not to do that, but ever since then, parking lots have caught my attention.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on rules the government has for parking spaces. There’s a formula, and if I had the time, inclination, or interest, I’d dig through the Land Development Code for the criteria. 

Generally, it's the building size and use that determine the number of parking spaces needed. Target is going to require a lot more parking spaces than a warehouse of the same size. 

I’ve always thought the Courthouse parking lot was too small. The parking lot across the street has many spaces, but it’s shared with the sheriff’s office and is utilized as an employee lot.

For regular business, it’s probably OK. But on heavy court docket days or busy County Commission Tuesdays, it’s not close to enough. Most people park across the street, or the Courthouse Square, on Dampier Street, or if it’s really packed, at Wallace Brooks Park a block away.

(This is riveting, Mike. Get to the point.)

It’s this: Courthouse public parking spaces are disappearing.

I started noticing it quite a few months ago. Blue signs stating “reserved” with a number began popping up.

At first, I didn’t pay much attention. Figured those slots were going to the judges or others who needed quick entry and exit.

Then, an entire back row of slots became reserved for jurors. Made sense because If there was no jury trial, the spots were open.

But in recent weeks I’ve seen a wholesale takeover of parking spaces in the public lot.

I walked the lot on Wednesday and counted 65-70 parking spaces. Six are disabled spaces, and one is for Purple Heart recipients. That leaves roughly 60 or so “public.”

Close to a third of the “public” spaces now have blue reserved signs. I made a records request a few weeks back to find out who was assigned those numbers. 

The county released the info, but had a legit security concern with me blabbing who has which parking spot. I mean, the idea behind reserved parking is two-fold: safety and efficiency.  That's why the blue signs have numbers and not names.

Here’s who has reserved Courthouse parking spaces:

• Clerk of Court
• Clerk of Court pool car
• County Administrator
• County Attorney
• Commissioners (5 spots)
• State Attorney pool car
• Public Defender pool car
• Facilities Maintenance (2 spots)
• Judges (3 spots, plus 8 in the lot across the street)

I’m not sure that list is complete, but it’s close.

The county recently moved commissioners’ reserved spots from the old jail parking lot to the Courthouse. Commissioner Jeff Kinnard apparently wants to make it official, as he has it on Tuesday’s board agenda to relocate the commissioner parking spots from behind the Old Courthouse.

I have no issue with that, but is it necessary to keep them reserved all the time? Commissioners meet together twice a month; holding five spots open on other days because they might drop by the office is silly.

If it’s a busy court day and folks are looking for a space, a bunch of empty reserved spaces is a bad look.

No big message today. Just a word about parking.

One of my favorite subjects.

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