They doubled the ticket and called it safe streets. I know the sentence. It is what a city says when it discovers that its own fine has become cheaper than its own meter, that people have done the arithmetic and started paying the penalty as if it were a price, and that the cure \u2014 instead of asking why the meter costs more than the punishment \u2014 is to make the punishment cost more, and then to pour the difference into a fund with a virtuous name.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, October 15, 2026, the St. Petersburg City Council voted unanimously to raise the fine for an expired meter or pay station from $17.50 to $32.50. FOX 13\u2019s Briona Arradondo reports the reasoning in one line from council member Richie Floyd: some drivers had been deliberately choosing to take a fine rather than pay for long parking periods. The rest of the package, as the St Pete Catalyst\u2019s Matthew Reed laid it out before the vote: most other violations \u2014 blocking a driveway, double parking, fire lanes, sidewalks, crosswalks \u2014 go from $30 to $45. Parking in a residential permit-only area without a permit goes from $50 to $65, and prohibited trailer parking rises the same. The charge to remove a parking boot doubles, $25 to $50. The annual residential parking permit doubles, $15 to $30. The monthly downtown permit goes from $20 to $25, which the Catalyst notes adds $60 a year for someone who buys it every month, $240 to $300. The fine for illegally occupying a space reserved for people with disabilities stays at $250. Residents with unpaid parking citations will not be eligible for a permit until those debts are addressed. FOX 13 says the money from the higher fines will go to the city\u2019s Safe Streets initiative. The timeline is the part I keep rereading. The council\u2019s Budget, Finance and Taxation Committee reviewed the proposal Aug. 28. Transportation and Parking Management Director Evan Mory wrote in a memo that the changes align with the city budget approved Sept. 17. At first reading on Oct. 1, the Catalyst reports, the measure received no discussion, no one registered to speak, and it passed unanimously with council members Gina Driscoll and Brandi Gabbard absent. The Florida Press, summarizing the same record, puts it plainly: the fee increases were folded into the budget before the ordinance itself came up for a vote. The visitors FOX 13 found downtown were not outraged: one from Bradenton said he paid $2.75 for an hour, another from Tampa estimated about $5 for two hours. The mayor still has the chance to veto under the city\u2019s normal process, and as of the latest reports the city had not announced the date the new amounts will appear on tickets; until then drivers pay the old ones.<\/p>\n
Buck asked whether a fine you budget for in advance is still a fine or just a subscription. Tyrone timed an hour at the meter against the old ticket and the ticket won. Cricket tried to laminate the new fine schedule and the laminator needed Gary. I love them. They are seasoning.<\/p>\n
Safe Streets is the alibi. The budget line is the story. Sit with the $32.50 until it confesses. A fine is supposed to be the state saying stop. When the state writes the fine into the revenue forecast in September and votes it into law in October, the fine is no longer saying stop; it is saying thank you, and it is saying it in advance. I am not going to pretend the old $17.50 was a moral position either \u2014 a penalty cheaper than compliance is just a discount with a uniform. But notice which number moved. Not the meter. The ticket. Not the price of doing the thing right. The price of being caught doing it wrong, plus the price of the permit to live on your own block, plus the price of getting your wheel back, each doubled by a council that did not discuss it at first reading because no one came to say anything. Silence at a public hearing is not consent; it is a Thursday. I used to think the fix for a city like this was a better ordinance written by nicer people. This one was written by nice people, unanimously, with a name on it that nobody can vote against. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, whose street it is when the fine is budgeted before it is voted, the permit to park outside your own house doubles, and the safety comes out of the meter.<\/p>\n
Sources:<\/strong> FOX 13 Tampa Bay, Briona Arradondo, \u201cSt. Petersburg parking fines nearly double following city council vote,\u201d Oct. 16, 2026<\/a>; St Pete Catalyst, Matthew Reed, \u201cSt. Pete drivers could face steeper parking fines,\u201d Oct. 2, 2026<\/a>; The Florida Press, \u201cSt. Petersburg nearly doubles parking fines after unanimous City Council vote,\u201d Oct. 18, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 Theo Ashford-Lindstr\u00f6m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Oct. 15 St. Petersburg\u2019s City Council voted unanimously to nearly double the expired-meter fine, $17.50 to $32.50, add $15 to most other tickets, and double residential permits ($15 to $30) and boot removal ($25 to $50). Council member Richie Floyd said drivers were taking the fine instead of paying. The money goes to Safe Streets; the changes were aligned with the Sept. 17 budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/theo-stpete-parking-fines-1019am.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}