City of Gainesville — Local services in Gainesville

I have never seen such an absurd parking system in a small rural city before.

Completely overboard with paid parking in the midtown and downtown areas. You are hurting local businesses by not allowing free parking for longer than 15 minutes. Also the cheap street parking is extremely limited so many are forced to use the overpriced parking garages.

Many of these overpriced parking garages are also using systems designed to screw over the person trying to park, such as the parking at "The Standard". Their parking system's website requires you to make an account and enter your payment details BEFORE even showing you the prices. INSANE.

Also due to the "neighborhood parking permit" people can't even have visitors park outside their house from 8:30-4:30???

Gainesville prevents residents of new "luxury" (meaning cheaply built, overpriced and abusive) apartment complexes from getting the neighborhood parking permit, which is around $150-200 per year. So these complexes decide to charge tenants anywhere from $100-250 per MONTH for parking in their garages. WHY ARE THESE FORCED PARKING COSTS 10X MORE THAN STREET PARKING??? These complexes' pricing should be at least in the same UNIVERSE as Gainesville's parking prices, especially considering that there are NO VIABLE ALTERNATIVES if you need a car.

This is inexcusable. This is not Orlando, this is not Miami, this is not New York. This is greed from the city and greed from developers, and unfortunately by the time anything (possibly) gets done about it, I'll have graduated. Thanks...

We recently moved to Gainesville and decided to try out some of the restaurants around. So we park in the Southwest Downtown parking garage and I think to myself...hmm this is odd you don't have to pay for parking as there is no gate to stop at to get a parking card. Well we get back to our car to find we got a ticket. Come to find out you do have to pay. After walking around my wife finally notices a small sign (see the picture, if you have trouble seeing it, well its because its the small sign next to the right of the large sign), which blends in with all the graffiti on the walls and another small sign near the entrance (again see the picture and good luck finding it). The place is lit up with electronic signs and graffiti all over so its easy to miss these small signs which tell you to somehow pay from your phone. How convenient they use a system unlike any other typical parking garage and then don't bother to make it obvious, with a large sign, you have to pay to park! I'm sure they also have someone watching to quickly come slap a ticket on the car...since I seriously doubt this person comes and checks every vehicle in the garage. Such a scam. Typical Govt leadership just wanting to generate revenue, but they don't think about the businesses impacted because I won't bother coming back to that side of town. Good...

Meeting with commissioner Ward went well and our discussion about Gainesvilles affordable housing crisis was not met with deaf ears, nor was the current smoke/health hazard in our neighborhood. Unfortunately we all know the wheels of progress move slowly and little will be done to help those in immediate need right now, at least and to his credit he listened with intent and I like to think we both learned a few things from each other. I will continue the fight and rest assured the pressure for real change, than just words but rather actions instead...