Report says Winter Park parking crunch driven partly by workers

WINTER PARK — Employees taking up spaces along Park Avenue and inefficient enforcement of time limits for those spots are two key reasons why parking is a problem in the popular shopping district, a new report has found.

But elected officials balked at adding enforcement staff for fear of becoming “a city of tickets.” Instead, they decided Monday to outfit their lone parking enforcement officer with new technology to speed up his patrol.

“I want to spend money on providing better parking experiences for our residents and our guests,” Vice Mayor Pete Weldon said. “I don’t want to spend money on penalizing people, and I don’t want to spend money on people that are hired to penalize people.”

The city earmarked $100,000 from its Community Redevelopment Agency for buying a vehicle-mounted license plate reader, as well as updating its parking code to encourage new developments to come with increased parking.

At the Spice and Tea Exchange on Park Avenue, employees are often a few minutes late and blame it on having to troll available spaces, which quickly fill up during busy hours.

Joshua Gant, the store’s sales manager, said although most employees on the avenue have hangtags allowing them to park in off-street lots, they face stiff competition from shoppers even in those lots.

Along Park Avenue, drivers can parallel park for free in spaces with a three-hour time limit. Spots on several surrounding streets and lots have four-hour limits.

On some days, Gant, 24, said he has parked on the busy street and decided to pay the inevitable $25 ticket.

“There have been times where I’ve just had to own up to it if I’m tired of circling and I’m already late,” he said. “If somebody walks in a few minutes late, I don’t even have to ask why.”

The problem is widespread, according to the report from Kimley-Horn, the city’s parking consultant.

The report found Park Avenue employees resort to parking along the Avenue in hopes of dodging Derek Tooley, the city’s only full-time parking enforcer.

Tooley, a 12-year veteran unsworn officer, wrote about 2,200 parking tickets throughout the city last year, with most in the downtown area.

He said he usually directs circling drivers to the fourth and fifth floors of a Canton Avenue parking garage or a surface lot by the city’s train station where shoppers and employees alike can park.

But “we still get a lot of people in loading zones,” Tooley said.

Each day he walks the avenue and other busy streets with