Call it Boca Raton's chicken and egg. On the one hand: More and more cars are coming through the city's downtown, so finding a parking space has become difficult. On the other, more cars means the city gives more parking tickets when folks are staying too long.
The solution? Parking meters!
See also: Fort Lauderdale Named Among the Best Cities for Parking Your Car
Today at 1:30 p.m., the Community Redevelopment Agency will meet to discuss options, including meters. The Sun Sentinel reports that Boca's parking enforcement wrote 84 $35 parking tickets between May 19 and June 30 at downtown's 541 unmetered spaces.
Although meters may be the most painless option (Delray Beach, by the way, votes this October on whether to add metered parking), there remain other possibilities, according to City Manager Leif Ahnell's report.
The city will also be looking at whether to simply add more parking signs and people monitoring said parking spaces, purchase private land for more parking, or employ a downtown shuttle to move folks.
Either way, the meeting should stir up debate. One City Council member is already advocating for no change -- yet. Some of the parking currently downtown comes via timed spaces, which allow cars to park for free for a designated period of time. City Council member Scott Singer told WPTV he wants to see these free spaces being enforced longer before those spaces are charged for.
"I'd like to see the city continue its program of enforcing the timed parking downtown and see how that plays out for a little longer than the first few months," Singer said.
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