FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — Fernandina Beach city commissioners filed a motion to revisit their initial vote on paid parking during Tuesday’s meeting.
The measure failed in a 2-2 vote, but it raised the question of whether the city’s controversial parking policy is really dead.
This comes after the commission voted 4-1 to rescind its paid parking contract last month.
Roughly 75% of Fernandina Beach voters opposed the program from expanding outside of downtown during the Florida primary last month, leading some city commissioners who were initially for the program to back a motion to get rid of it.
But Tuesday night’s meeting showed that some city commissioners are struggling to stand behind their initial vote.
“I don’t know exactly why my fellow commissioners wanted to attempt to bring this back to life,” said Fernandina Beach Vice Mayor and City Commissioner Darron Ayscue.
Ayscue has been against paid parking from the beginning.
“It’s widely unpopular,” Ayscue said. “It’s an unpopular initiative. I think that was shown through with the (referendum) vote.”
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Local business owner Jeff Freese says a lot of work was put into making sure the voices opposed to paid parking were heard. Now it’s concerning that the city tried to revisit the issue.
“I think the citizens of Fernandina Beach were very, very clear with the 75/25 split that they didn’t want paid parking,” Freese said. “So I’m not sure why we’re revisiting that at this point.”
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