In 2023, more than half of all crimes in Lexington were related to parking, according to the Lexington Police Department’s Annual Report. But business owners say that parking remains a problem in the city.
Business owners and Lexington City Police officials met to talk about parking issues in September, said Lieutenant Ron Condry of the LPD, who supervises parking enforcement. Condry said that the LPD would increase the visibility of parking enforcement personnel.
Reginald Turner is the sole LPD employee tasked with parking enforcement, Condry said.
Turner is not a police officer, Condry said, but rather a civilian employee of the department who has never attended a police academy. Because of this, Turner is not well versed in the kinds of patrolling practices that law enforcement officers are familiar with, said Condry.
While police officers can help enforce parking regulations, only two or three officers write tickets at a time, Condry said.
To help ease the burden on Turner, the police department acquired a dedicated parking enforcement car in 2019, and it was in use late that year.
The car was able to scan the license plate information of parked cars and refer back to the long-term, two-hour or 10-minute parking maximums in specific areas, said Condry. It helped automatically write tickets when a car was in violation.
Less than a year after the department got the car, the equipment on the vehicle broke, Condry said. While the lights on the car work, the scanning equipment is nonfunctional.
When the car was in operation, the number of tickets written increased from about 500 in 2018 to more than 1,000 in 2019. Tickets fell to about 250 in 2021 after the car broke down.
Condry said the number of tickets rose in 2022 to about 1,000 because police cadets helped write tickets.
Recently, the department purchased equipment to fix the parking enforcement car. Condry said he was optimistic about an increase in parking tickets once it is operational again.
Despite the department’s attempts to address parking violations, business owners are still frustrated.
Susan Crawford, owner of the Pappagollo clothing store in downtown Lexington, says that the lack of parking affects business.
“People aren’t coming to shop [because] they can’t find a place to park,” Crawford said.
Crawford and over a dozen other Lexington business owners signed a petition asking city hall and the police department to step up parking enforcement, according to the Rockbridge Report.
Although the city said they would increase the visibility of parking enforcement, Condry said that there may not be a long-term solution to parking issues.
While the city’s population has increased, the number of parking spaces available has not, he said.
“If you have a gallon jug, you can only put a gallon of liquid…in that gallon jug, but [if] you keep trying to add more to it, it’s going to overflow,” Condry said, “That’s what we have in… parking. We have only oh so many spots, but our populace is growing.”
