FORT MYERS, Fla. — People feel stressed about going to downtown Fort Myers because the parking process is too complex and challenging to use.
As your Fort Myers community correspondent, I learned about some of the concerns by walking the streets of downtown and talking to business owners, employees, and locals. They shared their frustrations with the kiosks, apps, and use of the equipment.
The city has been progressively working on some issues, but locals say it is not enough because people are experiencing tickets for quick runs to their favorite stores and restaurants.
I walked the downtown streets on Friday and saw plenty of cars with tickets on them.
I ran into Owen Williams, who was in the process of paying for parking and had issues.
"I'm hitting right on it, but it comes up a different letter or number, and I have to start over again and again," says Owen Williams, a resident. He continued to tell me another man walked over to help him through the process.
Williams says he just needed an hour to have lunch with his son, who works downtown. "I will never park here again," says Williams. "I'll find something. I will park in that parking lot."
The city of Fort Myers added a 10-trip parking garage pass in August.
They also extended the 5 pm Monday through Saturday free on-street parking until September 30th.
Denison's Parking sent a statement to FOX 4. See below.
As I explained to you on the phone, Denison Parking is responsible for making sure all payment kiosks in the Downtown area are working at all times. Our daily routine includes monitoring those kiosks, ensuring they are online throughout the day, and processing and accepting credit card and coins payments. Part of our enforcement crew's job is to notify our office located on First Street about any issues with the kiosks, and we fix them right away. If a technician has to be called, Denison makes sure a sign gets posted to that machine, redirecting people to another kiosk. We also have several other parking payment options, like cellphone applications, ParkMobile, Honk Mobile, and Passport, to help the public pay for parking without visiting the street kiosks. We, Denison Parking, welcome all visitors, employees, and business owners who have questions and concerns to call us or visit our office located at 2123 First Street if they have questions or concerns. Our job is to ensure the general public knows the Downtown parking rules and how to pay for parking. We are happy to explain how kiosks, apps, or parking garage equipment works to the general public.
Tanya Delerosa works downtown Fort Myers and hopes the council solves this problem because the process scares off their local customers.
"They just want a quick stop, you know, like they just here real quick for a couple seconds and gone, and they already get a ticket just to get out their car real quick," says Delarosa. "It's pretty stressful."
She says locals -- visitors and business owners are getting tickets daily.
"We're all just trying to work or be civilized, and its parking should not be that hard,."
Permanently keeping free on-street parking after five is on Tuesday's city council meeting agenda.
