Ocoee cracks down on commercial vehicle parking

The city of Ocoee has tightened up its rules related to parking commercial vehicles on public streets.

City leaders voted unanimously during the Feb. 4 commission meeting to approve an ordinance that amends the city code to prevent commercial vehicles from parking on any public street or road right of way, with the exception of loading purposes or other uses permitted by the land development code. 

The ordinance defines commercial vehicles as: any truck or vehicle with a tandem rear axle or gross vehicle weight of more than 10,000 pounds or has a length more than 21 feet or height more than 10 feet; buses, taxicabs, shuttle vans, limousines or vans used to transport passengers for a fee; vehicles with external modifications designed to be used for lifting objects or persons above the vehicle height; and step vans, flatbeds, stake bed trucks, wreckers, farm equipment, dump trucks and earth-moving equipment.

“We had a large rash of commercial vehicles, we’re talking (about) cargo vehicles and larger ... parking on public streets everywhere,” Ocoee Police Chief Charlie Brown said. “They might park it on a public street, but not in their neighborhood. They go to leave it in someone else’s neighborhood. … (We’ve had) continued complaints by the citizens about commercial vehicles.”

The commissioners agreed that the city should crack down on commercial vehicle parking on public roads and that the city should have a more effective mechanism for collecting unpaid fines.

“We have problems with the trucks,” Mayor Rusty Johnson said. “Trucks are parking everywhere around the city in places where (they shouldn’t be). … There has got to be some kind of way to put a stop to this. … If you work for a company, they got to have somewhere for you to park that truck.”

“I’ve seen tractor-trailers literally parked in front of a house and that’s problematic,” Commissioner Larry Brinson said. “It’s problematic because when you look at public safety, our first responders need to get down those roads, and it’s hard for them to get down the roads already with regular cars parking there. … We should show some type of consideration for special situations, but those folks (can) come to the city and maybe we can work it out, however, as a general rule, we must make sure that parking makes sense in Ocoee as a whole.”

Prior to the vote, resident Victoria Laney appeared before the commission to express her concerns over prohibiting commercial vehicles from parking on public roads. She also proposed that the city should create its own designated parking area for commercial vehicles within city-owned property that not being used.. 

“I’d like the city to take a piece of property that they already own that we haven’t developed yet and make a commercial truck parking lot,” Laney said. “The trucks would park there by permit. The city could charge for the permit, and that would give all the trucks a place to park that’s safe.”

In addition to prohibiting commercial vehicles from parking on public roads or rights of way, the ordinance also amends city code to allow the Ocoee Police Department to notify Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) of individuals who have three or more outstanding traffic violations. The tax collector may not issue a license plate or revalidation stickers to any individual with three or more outstanding parking violations until those violations have been paid. The ordinance was proposed by the Ocoee Police Department. 

“It gives us the ability to make sure we collect the fines,” Brown said. “In the past, if we wrote a citation, we’d have nothing (to ensure collection) except for compliance. Individuals could comply or not comply. … We had no mechanism in place to ensure we would get compliance, so we put … a normal recovery process in place by either immobilizing the vehicle — which we don’t have a process for that — or turning their information over to the state so that they can’t renew their license plates. That’s a normal practice in most areas.”

The commission also approved an ordinance related to the collection of unpaid red light violation notices or uniform traffic citations. The ordinance amends the city code to allow the clerk to notify the DHSMV of individuals who have unpaid red-light notices of violation. The tax collector may not issue a license plate to or renew the tags of an individual with unpaid red-light violations until the fines are collected. There are currently $71,587 of unpaid notices of violation, however, only unpaid notices of violation the take place after this ordinance’s passing will be attempted to be collected. The police department also proposed this ordinance.