City to consider parking ordinance for Reid Avenue
According to Port St. Joe Police Chief Jake Richards, he and City Attorney Clinton McCahill are nearing the completion of a parking ordinance, which they will propose to the board of city commissioners at an upcoming meeting in an attempt to curb some of the most common complaints they receive regarding parking along Reid Avenue.
“We’ve been working diligently on some ordinances for parking on Reid Avenue,” Richards told the city commissioners at their June 13 meeting.
“I’m just telling everybody it’s not going to be a total fix it… but it does give us a little bit of teeth to be able to do something because right now we have nothing.”
Richards first began working on the ordinance after complaints about parking were widely circulated on social media during an influx of tourists around Spring Break.
Among the complaints the ordinance will address, according to Richards, are people taking up multiple parking spots or not pulling far enough forward and blocking the roadway.
“The only thing that we need, according to the judge when I spoke to him about this, is the money (from fines) in this ordinance needs to be earmarked for something, kind of like we do with the boat ramp.”
Commissioners discussed setting up a fund to benefit parking issues throughout the city and having the fines go towards that, though no definitive decision was made.
The ordinance will have to go through two public readings before it can be passed by the city commissioners, both of which will be publicly noticed.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.