Paid parking in downtown Fernandina Beach appears to be as popular as Bud Light’s bikini-clad poster boy Dylan Mulvany at an Octoberfest celebration.
Other than the four clueless members of the City Commission, I haven’t discovered a single person who favors installing parking meters in downtown Fernandina Beach.
Every single downtown business owner I’ve talked to is against it. It’s mystifying to me why Commissioner Tim Poynter, who owns multiple downtown businesses, is an enthusiastic advocate.
Commissioner Poynter told the myopic online outlet Observer: “The decision was about long-term survival. Sometimes you have to make a decision that’s not necessarily popular. Parking is not free — our citizens are already paying for it. This is about helping the community take care of itself.”
OK, Commissioner, if, as you say: “our citizens are already paying for it”, then why are you demanding they pay a $100 annual fee or feed meters each time they go downtown, or whatever devious money-grubbing schemes the Commission has come up with? How about a plan for saving taxpayer money?
There are a variety of reasons to oppose downtown Fernandina Beach paid parking, a significant one being that local radical left winger Sheila Cocchi is all for it. Anything this unemployed lefty gadfly proposes is a clear signal that it is not good for the city, local businesses, or residents, just the opposite.
The lone elected opponent, City Commissioner Darron Ayscue, expressed his disagreement with paid parking responding to Cocchi’s Facebook support of it. He cautioned that the city staff is also oblivious concerning the issue.
Commissioner Ayscue was the only member of the Commission who voted against the proposal in its 4-1 decision Tuesday, August 19. Despite widespread opposition to parking meters four commissioners stuck their collective fingers in the publics’ eye saying the city needs the cash. So do the folks they plan on taking it from.
If the city needs money how about trimming its bloated overpaid staff, selling some of the new vehicles it keeps buying, cutting each department budget by 10-15 percent, and merging the redundant building, police, and fire departments with the county? Or how about unloading some of its millions of dollars’ worth of nonperforming and untaxed real estate assets that are nothing more than swampy mosquito sanctuaries?
Former News Leader columnist Steve Nicklas, now with the Yulee News, wrote that financially screwing the public isn’t new to the city. Back in March 2021 he wrote a News Leader column headlined: “City manager fortunate he doesn’t work in private sector”.
In it Nicklas also pointed out that during Dale Martin’s tenure property taxes increased by nearly 50 percent; the city’s staff grew by 43 new full-time employees; there are leaking sewer lines; unnecessary beach access expenses; landscaping issues; the $600,000 golf course Top Tracer game fiasco; an inferior garbage collection contract; and the overpriced airport terminal; and a $500,000 Simmons Road park nobody wanted. Poynter was a commissioner during this period of excess spending.
In his no-nonsense one-paragraph Facebook comment Friday, August 15, Commissioner Ayscue slammed the city staff writing: “Literally no one in City Hall knows what’s going on” in regard to plans to implement paid parking in a core eight-block area of downtown.
Ayscue lumped them into the same clueless category as Cocchi.
“Spin it however you want,” Ayscue wrote. “Staff can’t even answer basic questions on this entire issue. They can’t even agree that going with a vendor while a petition to eliminate paid parking is pending is even legal. Nor can we even get confirmation that using paid parking revenue is legal without hard numbers. There is no plan. I’m here to state that unequivocally.”
Downtown businesses demonstrated their opposition to meters by hosting petition-signings calling for a citizen vote. Those signing had to present two forms of identification and proof they were registered to vote in the city. Other businesses are scheduled to host similar events.
Where is the impotent Chamber of Commerce hiding during this brouhaha? As usual Chamber members get nothing from the Chamber for the dues they pay other than an occasional ribbon cutting ceremony and meaningless blah blah.
It’s also obvious the city and its pricey paid consultants and staff didn’t do any research on the paid parking issue. All they had to do was look for examples in the state.
For example, after three years of complaints from business owners and visitors, the town of Dunedin (population 30,000) city commissioners voted in 2018 to make downtown parking free again. Meters were installed in that small West Florida town in 2015 . But the criticism against them grew throughout the three years until city commissioners decided to do away with them.
When proposing the meters Dunedin city officials said they would help with turnover and prevent drivers from hogging a spot for an indefinite amount of time. Sound familiar?
The Tampa Bay Times reports that since word got out that parking meters were removed, locals and visitors have returned to downtown Dunedin in great numbers. Fernandina (population 13,000) will see the opposite happening when meters start popping up downtown say those familiar with the issue.
If the issue goes to voters it’s likely to receive a massive thumbs down. Any of the four meter-huggers that voted for the mechanical pickpockets will meet the same fate if they run for reelection.
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Bonk! Democrats locally and nationally can’t talk about any issue without stepping on a rake. For example if DEI is such a good thing why do Democrats get angry when you call one of them a DEI hire?
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Just Wondering Department: Where does unemployed local liberal gadfly and leftwing radical Sheila Cocchi get the money to organize her protests, rent venues for her phony “Aaron Bean Townhalls”, and material she distributes to her grey-haired gaggle of granny groupies?
The local Democrat party even appears to be fed up with Cocchi’s antics. She no longer holds any official position in it and is currently operating as a free agent activist screecher.
So who pays for her protesting antics?
“Fox and Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones verbally brawled with Crowds on Demand CEO Adam Swart on Friday, August 15 over who was paying him to provide crowds for protests.
Protests have taken place, including the “No Kings” protests in multiple cities across the U.S. on July 4, with some of them turning violent, including one in Portland, Oregon, where rioters stormed a facility used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After Swart claimed his company engaged in “peaceful protest,” Jones asked Swart if the use of paid protesters gave an “accurate account” of public sentiment, prompting Swart to claim the Tea Party used paid protesters, leading Joes to jump in.
Several conservative events, candidates, and politicians have been targeted by paid protesters over the years.
When asked what organizations foot the bill, Swart gave an evasive answer, claiming that protesters are paid in several ways, including academic fellows who were paid to organize demonstrations. Swart also claimed that Congressional staff were paid protesters.
“It’s an interesting business model,” Jones said. “We look forward to seeing exactly where the money is coming from though. Because I think when you are affecting public policy, everybody likes organic protests, it’s a part of our democracy, but we have groups that are funding-”
“What we do is organic,” Swart claimed, with Jones responding, “It’s not organic, you are paying them. That means it’s totally different. They are professional, paid people.”
So, where does Cocchi get her funding?
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Overheard Downtown: Commenting on an odd-looking person walking past them, a Centre Street bystander asked: “Is that a man or a woman?” His companion responded: “I don’t know, but it’s certainly a Democrat.”
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Who Actually Talks Like This? Reporting on Target’s proposed new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, the Wall Street Journal quoted him Thursday, August 21, during a call with analysts saying: “We have to get back to growth. That is mission 1.2.3,.4, 5. We haven’t had enough of it over the last few years. We know that. I know that.”
That’s like the General Manager of baseball’s worst team, the Chicago White Sox, saying: “We need to get back to winning. We haven’t had enough of that the last few years.”
I’ve written opening remarks for executive at analyst meetings and if I had written anything even close to that I would have been cleaning out my desk before the meeting even started.
I suspect Mr. Fiddelke won’t be running things there for long.
Other parts of the island have restaurants, bars, entertainment and free parking. I guess I will spend my money there.
The commissioners, who don’t know left from right, have once again proven that they are incapable of city leadership. Just Take a look at where we are with Ryam, Tringali, Brett’s, Riverside and any other of many topics that they have not listened to the residents about. The total dismissal of the cry from thousands of Fernandina residents to prevent moving forward with Paid Parking will go down in the annuls of history as MeterGate. Our leadership group doesn’t know left from right, and has no fiscal financial expertise at all. Just as my role as a senior executive leader was to deliver Corporate goals in strategy and execution while managing the budget and expense sides of the business carefully. Our Commissioners just approve and spend our money with no regard for our generous funding. I received my projected tax in the mail yesterday and the “no increase” has resulted in an increase of over $500 to a total of over $8,800 for my 50’x100′ lot, small house and single garage. If we accept all of this and call it “fiscal financial management” and allow this to continue we can change the bridge to “One Way”.
Word on the street is that there may be a recall in the early stages of thinking.
Just praying for common sense to prevail.
What’s happened to the possibility of dismantling the city and making downtown a special taxing district? I don’t see the level of care for the downtown pouring over into the city at large. I believe we have a great downtown and decertifying it might (or might not) negatively impact downtown businesses. I personally would be in favor of letting the county commissioners make some common sense decisions for the city at large.
Great blog, Dave. If our commissioners spent half the time they spend conjuring up ways to increase funding for our city on decreasing their expenditures and trimming the budget, this problem would solve itself. An attractive 3-4 story parking garage within a short walking distance from downtown would also solve his problem. I’d gladly pay a dollar for a covered parking spot. Instead these knuckleheads will spend millions to make a million or so, and we’ll still be short on cash for real and needed projects. Kudos to Paul Lore and others for leading the charge against paid parking. Never underestimate a guy who can row a boat across an ocean! Neighbors, please go sign the petition.
Installation of parking meters is the “free money drug” that lures lazy gubamint bureaucrats to favor this new income source rather than looking at ways to cut expenses. If someone gave you $10,000 a month for free, would you cut back on any spending ?
I am against parking meters as well! And yes, let’s look at cutting “fat” in other areas, if the town needs money! BUT – parking HAS become a problem!!! Whether it’s because people hog spots, or just because we have more and more people moving here and needing those spots ……. Everytime I go downtown I have to go around town, back and forth, back and forth, looking for a spot. Even at night, when I go out for dinner. METERS are not the SOLUTION to getting more movement and traffic in our town.
Why not issue some BONDS to build a multilevel Parking Building near the Port or Railroad?? And, at the same time, limit City parking to 1 or 2 hours. Then, anyone wanting long-term parking could use the Parking Building!
To ME, this seems so much more practical, and I am sure most citizens would also agree that this makes sense.
I love our town – it’s varied shops, bars, restaurants and it’s charming historic atmosphere – but it IS so darn frustrating when you have to drive so long, just to find a place to park! I find that I have even PRAYED for parking spots! (I am NOW praying for a Building, instead!)
Found this on Facebook! Sign the petition TODAY!
https://chng.it/hBZ4LjCLss
So, according to Poynter, we are already paying for parking. Yet, now, Poynter wants us to have paid parking meters of some sorts. Is that not then paying twice for the same service??? Is that not what one calls double-dipping???
We all hear how the left is on the wrong side of almost all 80-20 issues and wonder why they choose to fall on their collective swords for the privilege of being the 20%. With this 99-1 issue, these four have decided to commit political suicide. Incredible.
One of my customers is a community within the city limit which property taxes adds up to millions and will get close to five million once completed. That’s for just over 100 properties, AND, they own and maintain their own roads, and have less than a dozen kids going to school. It’s insane when you think of the amazing amount of money that the city collects that it still try to justify more. It’s more about control and power than need. Boston had a tea party once! Maybe one day Fernandina Beach will have one.
Ron, you are being much too logical to comment on FB political machinations.
Bradley Bean was absolutely right in his predictions of how the candidates would actually vote once in office and former Mayor Mike Lednovich was absolutely wrong. When Mike says tourists pay nothing, he sounds totally ignorant of the blessed rainfall of huge tourism income that benefits city businesses. Should they pay some of it to support the infrastructure that supports them? That’s a better solution than taxing everyone to pay for FB govt’s excesses and waste.
Paid parking is tacky, expensive, inefficient, cumbersome, annoying. It inconveniences and drives people away. Why do some of the city’s pet projects actually reduce parking spaces?
Minshew’s bait and switch ideas for enforcement and alternative transportation actually made sense. Why the switch from that to paid parking, just like she played games with party registration double switches when she was running for office? I agree that Poyntner’s position is inconsistent with generating more business. Get these people off the Commission.
So, the Commission thinks the city needs more money? Why don’t they address the huge increase in city employees and budget? FB budget per capita is far higher than even the leftist California City we fled 4 years ago.
How about a boycott or picketing of Karibo, Duck Pinz, Timoti’s and Sculkys
Thursday, my wife and I wanted a quick lunch so we hopped in the truck and drove down to 4th Street Deli and got two amazing Trio salads. It won’t be that we’re boycotting, but I doubt we’ll be doing that if we have to pay to park for a convenient lunch. Just saying.
Very insightful. Great pics! I work downtown. This will have a bearing on me, but if the paid parking sticks I’ll absorb the cost. It’s wrong though, and seems to be another solution in search of a problem. I guess there’s a back story, seems this might be a boon to one or more of the commissioners. If so, nothing new under the sun and we are reaping what we sowed since voters allowed the scoundrels to overtake our city commission. We have one voice on the commission and that’s all.
Y’all bunch of cheapskates. I look forward to having my choice of parking spots soon.
For public events like Sounds on Centre, the Shrimp Drop, 4th of July fireworks, and the Christmas Tree lighting, will parking be “free”?
Will I have to pay a City parking fee in order to visit the County library or the County courthouse or the US Post Office?
Will I get 15+ minutes free parking when I pick up my usual to-go order at Timoti’s or Cafe Karibo? Will I have to pay for a full hour just for a 15 minute pickup?
With physical parking meters the new vehicle can always make use of any “leftover” minutes from the previous vehicle. With kiosk controlled parking, everyone starts their parking time from zero minutes. Who keeps those paid for, but unused minutes? The City? The parking company?
Just asking.
Thanks Dave!
The modern city is a place of immense struggle—a place where chaos, indolence, and internal combustion conspire to assault the senses and trample the last remaining threads of civic order. And yet, into this swirling cauldron of congestion and confusion, there stands one humble, unsung hero, so often maligned, misunderstood, and vandalized by ne’er-do-wells in ironic T-shirts: the parking meter.
Yes, I shall defend it. I shall raise the meter to its rightful place in the pantheon of civilized achievements, alongside indoor plumbing and gluten-free oat milk. For in a world overrun by thoughtless drivers, reckless parallel-parkers, and suburbanites who descend upon the city like caffeinated locusts, paid parking is not tyranny—it is salvation.
Let me be clear: free parking is a lie. It is a lie told by those who think asphalt falls from the sky and enforcement officers sprout fully formed from the loins of bureaucracy. It is a lie whispered by bumper-stickered libertarians and muttered by low-level podcast hosts with a persecution complex. It is the ideological opiate of the SUV-driving masses.
Behind every “free” parking space is a taxpayer. A worker. A cyclist. A bus rider. A pigeon with a municipal soul. For decades, we’ve subsidized the sacred “right” to dump several tons of metal curbside as though it were an inalienable constitutional privilege—somewhere between free speech and free Wi-Fi.
And what has this indulgence wrought? Behold: a city suffocated by traffic, choked by idling engines and double-parked delivery vans. Behold: a curbspace colonized not by the people, but by the automobiles of the lazy and the entitled. Behold: the tyranny of the minivan.
The meter, by contrast, is a democratizer. A regulator. A noble arbiter of space in a world too fond of sprawling. Paid parking is the social contract made manifest in steel and LCD display—a humble request that if you wish to occupy the public realm with your private chariot, you must contribute, however modestly, to the maintenance of our shared urban body.
And let us speak, too, of justice. Who benefits from free parking? Not the working poor, who often rely on public transit. Not the disabled, who are still crowded out by the vehicular colonizers hogging the curb. Not small business owners, whose storefronts are obscured by all-day parkers who treat main street like their personal garage. No, it is the privileged and the oblivious who cry loudest for “freedom” at the curb, who demand the right to loiter on pavement maintained by the sweat of others.
What of the argument that paid parking is elitist? Nonsense. I say it is the height of equity. A pricing system ensures turnover, availability, and access. It says, “You are welcome here—but not forever. You are not the sun around which the city revolves. Your 2013 Honda Accord does not have diplomatic immunity.” It creates fairness through friction.
Would you demand free office space downtown? Free groceries? Free cappuccinos from the feminist café with the unstable Wi-Fi? No? Then why must the car-owning class be gifted thousands of dollars per year in publicly subsidized vehicle storage, while cyclists dodge death and bus riders marinate in the scent of forgotten sandwiches?
Let us also remember that the revenue from paid parking—when not embezzled by unscrupulous officials or squandered on ill-conceived “smart benches”—can actually be used for good. Imagine curb revenue funding bus shelters that don’t leak, bike lanes that don’t dead-end into existential crisis, and sidewalks that don’t double as obstacle courses for the visually impaired. This, my fellow philosophers, is the infrastructure of empathy.
So do not vilify the meter. Do not mock its quiet dignity or deface it with your anarchist stickers. It is not a predator, but a priest—offering penance, structure, and the sacred rhythm of the rotating curb. It asks not for your allegiance, but your contribution.
And what of those who cannot pay? Shall they be exiled to the hinterlands? Of course not! Let us invest in true mobility justice: subsidized transit, equitable parking permit programs, and community-designed streetscapes that center people, not tailpipes. But this cannot occur in a world where parking is “free” and therefore permanently congested by the first to arrive and the last to leave.
The curb, my friends, is not a storage facility. It is a commons—a shared membrane of the city’s circulatory system. Treating it as a dumping ground for your private vehicle is not an expression of freedom. It is civic narcissism.
I call, therefore, not for less paid parking, but for better paid parking: Sliding scales! Time limits! Municipal jazz trios serenading every payment! Let the meter be not a tool of oppression, but a symbol of shared responsibility—a tiny monument to the idea that public space must serve the public, not just the parked.
So go ahead. Fumble for your card. Curse the app. Pay the meter.
And in that noble act, know that you are contributing—not just to infrastructure, not just to order—but to the dream of a city where space is sacred, and no one gets to take more than their fair share.
Saint Iggy……a well written and hilarious post that I enjoyed reading. However, this is not a modern city of immense struggle. This is an old sleepy town that the residents love and the tourists find charming. So, I think I like it the way it is….
Now I need to find one of those petitions so that the will of the people can sort this issue out……..instead of 4 people that we thought were against it when they were elected.
Mr. Reilly is both eloquent and periphrastic, and yet he fails to logically explain why the citizens of Fernandina Beach, having once paid for the paving of the streets should, once again pay for the privilege to occasionally park there. In fact, he advocates for the opposite.
Still – fun to read a little dissent without the rudeness employed by others.
Oh, magnanimous saints of municipal logic, how the common rabble misunderstand thee!
Permit me, as a sincere crusader of justice and gastric integrity, to elucidate for these whining philistines of Fernandina Beach why their cries against metered parking are the petulant bleatings of economic neanderthals.
Yes, yes – without even getting into the slave labor that was spent on many of the remaining pretty brick streets, etc, I shall concede that you paid for the streets. You paid for their paving, their painting, their picturesque, meandering quaintness. And now what do you do? You abandon them to the marauding hordes of sandal-wearing interlopers from Georgia who descend like locusts upon our charming avenues, parking their oversized SUVs as if they were entitled to the very bricks of civilization!
You, noble taxpayer, should support metered parking—not in spite of your past contributions, but because of them! It is the only way to reclaim your patrimony from these rolling buffets of out-of-state gluttony! Meters are not a fee—they are a shield, a polite economic cudgel that says, “This space has value. We are not barbarians. Go park across the bridge or, better yet, go all the way to Yulee!”
And may I add: as I sit here, clutching my abdomen after consuming a bowl of “shrimp and grits” so violently over-seasoned that I briefly achieved astral projection, I find it deeply unjust that due to the lack of a nearby and clean public restroom while parking remains free, I must suffer here in the bathroom of PJD’s. Priorities, people!
So I say, install the meters! Let us rise above this suburban entitlement and embrace civilization—as long as the machines accept exact change and not some infernal app that demands my email address and blood type.
Bernard, if “your community” is Crane Island, don’t forget that property was originally in the county but the developers requested that it be annexed into the city for a variety of reasons such as better police/fire protection and utility service. While nobody likes to pay more taxes than necessary, city property taxes for homesteaded property generally only represent 25% of the homeowner’s total tax bill with county and school board taxes at about 37% each.