After resident backlash, Miami Beach decides not to increase parking rates

Miami Beach elected officials voted Wednesday to prevent parking rate hikes from taking effect in October, striking down a plan by the city administration that was met with swift backlash from the public.

The City Commission’s vote was unanimous to block the rate increases, which would have raised street parking in South Beach from $4 to $6 per hour and doubled a discounted rate for city residents from $1 to $2 per hour.

Mayor Steven Meiner said officials had received “a lot of emails” opposing the increases. The proposal to reverse the rate increases was sponsored by Meiner and all of the city’s six elected commissioners.

“It’s not every day you see all seven of us sponsor legislation,” Meiner said.

An original agenda for Wednesday’s budget hearing called only for a reversal of the increased rate for residents and did not address non-resident rates. But the agenda was updated this week to address non-resident rates, too.

Commissioner Alex Fernandez told the Herald his intention was always to nix the increases for both residents and non-residents and said the original language was the result of a “miscommunication issue.”

Miami Beach was set to impose parking increases for the first time since 2015 . A 2019 ordinance gave the city manager authority to adjust rates every five years based on the Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation.

The City Commission on Wednesday voted to repeal the automatic adjustments every five years. That item will be up for a final vote Oct. 30.

City Manager Eric Carpenter had informed Meiner and the City Commission of the rate changes in a Sept. 13 memo. In addition to the increases to resident rates and street parking rates in South Beach, parking in surface lots in South Beach was set to increase from $2 to $3 per hour.

On-street parking on the east side of Mid-Beach would have gone from $3 to $4 per hour, while all hourly parking in North Beach would have risen from $1 to $2. In residential parking zones, 24-hour visitor permits would have increased from $3 to $4.

After the city publicly announced the changes, several elected officials made public statements opposing the fee hikes.

“While parking rates haven’t increased since 2015, I fully understand how residents are pressured with so many other inflationary cost increases in life,” Commissioner Joseph Magazine wrote on social media.

After the last rate hike in 2015, the price of street parking in South Beach rose from $1.75 to $4 an hour, with smaller increases at surface lots and parking garages.

The move was intended not to raise city revenues but rather to reduce the number of drivers clogging the streets looking for parking and to incentivize people to park in garages and surface parking lots, city officials said at the time.