While beach towns rake in serious parking revenue on summer holidays, the City of Wilmington has traditionally made it a point to offer free parking on those days — in large part to help incentivize bringing residents and tourists alike to downtown businesses.
But during the Fourth of July and Memorial Day this year, the city didn’t set its meters to reflect that parking was free — and people spent $775 and $960.75, respectively, according to records provided by the city. A similar issue occurred on Memorial Day, 2021, and people spent $1094.50. All three of those holidays fell on Mondays when the city typically charges for parking.
By contrast, the revenue from last year’s Fourth of July was just $45.50. Last year the holiday fell on a Sunday, and it’s not clear if the city programmed the meters to reflect free parking, or if people were simply familiar with the city’s free Sunday parking policy.
The issue has affected other holidays, as well.
According to email records shared with WHQR, at least one business owner expressed frustration that the meters were not programmed to reflect free parking on Veterans Day 2021. The city corrected the issue for Thanksgiving 2021, but the business owner again contacted the city’s parking manager after Memorial Day of this year.
The city lists the free-parking holidays online on its parking page and posts notices on social media. It also has the technology to prevent meters from collecting fees from credit or debit card transactions on holidays – but it can’t currently reject cash or coins.
A city spokesperson acknowledged the city hopes to improve its communication around free parking.
“The City of Wilmington has experienced challenges broadcasting our holiday message on some of the meters’ displays including on the Fourth of July,” the spokesperson said. “We are always working to improve our communications and outreach and understanding that, despite the messaging on the meters and the website, we will increase our efforts to improve awareness.”
Sluggish response to public records requests
Several downtown business owners and managers reached out to WHQR about the parking meter display issue on July 4 of this year, and on July 6 WHQR requested records of the city’s on-street parking revenue from summer holidays in 2021 and 2022.
A city spokesperson initially said the parking department could provide that information, but several weeks later informed WHQR that the city clerk’s office would require a formal public records request (PRR). The spokesperson noted that the parking manager had almost completed compiling the data, so the PRR could hopefully be filled quickly.
WHQR filed a PRR for the parking revenue records the next day, on July 27.
On October 5, the clerk’s office responded to an email checking on the status of the PRR and indicated that staff was still working on the request. On October 7 the PRR was filled.
City Clerk Penny Spicer-Sidbury told reporters at a recent media conference held at the Wilmington Police Department that her office was being inundated with records requests, which was leading to a backlog of three to four weeks or more.
State law requires that custodians of records respond to PRRs as “promptly as possible” — but there’s considerable variability in how ‘prompt’ gets defined. The University of North Carolina School of Government’s overview of state public record law notes that “[u]nless a request is extraordinary, however, a custodian probably should respond within a week or two at most.”
Extraordinary requests often involve a large number of documents or the requirement for redactions. WHQR’s request did not require any redactions and was, apparently, already largely compiled by the city's parking manager before the formal request was filed.
