Either an epidemic of disabilities has been afflicting the extreme northwest corner of Key West, or workers at downtown businesses have been gaming the system and using handicap parking placards to park for free all day in on-street parking spaces that would otherwise cost $6 an hour.
A recent week of observation by the Keys Weekly noted two particular city blocks that seem to have been hit hardest by this potential cluster of medical disabilities — the northernmost block of Simonton Street between Front Street and Simonton Beach, and the tiny Fitzpatrick Lane connecting Front and Greene streets behind the Kino Sandal store.
On March 30, seven of 10 cars that were parked in the first block of Simonton Street had handicap parking placards hanging from the rearview mirror. The blue color of the permits indicates a permanent parking permit, as opposed to temporary red placards that are granted for short-term use, such as when a person is recovering from surgery, a broken bone or is pregnant.
The permanent blue placards, which describe all of the ones hanging in windshields downtown, are valid for four years at a time.
“But even when those four years are up, the holder of the permit just needs to renew their placard online for another four years; there’s no requirement that they get a renewed medical authorization from a doctor affirming that they struggle with mobility or are on oxygen,” Key West parking director John Wilkins told the Keys Weekly on March 30.
In order to obtain a handicap placard, a driver must get a doctor to document their disability and sign a medical authorization form.
Some doctors in Key West and throughout the state are known to be generous in authorizing handicap parking placards, Wilkins said.
The driver then takes that medical authorization form to their local tax collector’s office or motor vehicle office, which issues the placard. A unique identifying number is assigned to each placard so law enforcement and parking officers can verify ownership of a placard, as they have been known to be stolen and used fraudulently, Wilkins said.
The Keys Weekly has asked the county tax collector’s office for the number of handicap parking placards that have been issued by the Key West office for each of the past five years, and is awaiting that report.
“Florida is dealing with a lot of handicapped parking fraud, and the city of Key West, for the past few months, has been participating in a statewide enhanced enforcement effort to combat that fraud,” Wilkins said. “Our parking officers have been patrolling areas where the placards are commonly used and they enter the placard number to verify that it is associated with the parked car. If the placard doesn’t match the vehicle or the registered owner, then we write a citation.”
Wilkins emphasized that the placards are attached to individual people, not vehicles, “so anyone with a grandmother who has a handicap placard borrows that placard, often to park for free downtown,” he said. “But that driver has to be able to prove they were transporting the permit holder and not using it for themselves, which is often the case.”
The city of Key West gives drivers with handicap placards four free hours of parking in city-owned lots and on city streets in spaces typically considered metered parking that costs $6 per hour.
The Keys Weekly’s observations over the past week noted the seven cars were parked at the end of Simonton Street for at least eight hours at a time, as they were observed at 8 a.m. and again at 4 p.m. in the same on-street parking spots.
If they were fraudulently obtaining eight hours of free parking each day, just those seven cars are potentially costing the city an estimated $100,000 in annual parking revenues.
After the Keys Weekly contacted Wilkins about the prevalence of handicapped placards on Simonton Street and Fitzpatrick Lane, Wilkins instructed the city’s parking officers to investigate those areas. And by Tuesday, March 31, more than eight tickets had been issued to the supposedly handicapped drivers who had exceeded the four hours of free parking the city grants them.
“They get a $65 ticket for overtime parking, because after four hours, if they’re still parked there, then it’s the same as if they had only paid for four hours of parking and their time had expired,” Wilkins said.Stay tuned to keysweekly.com for updates to this enforcement activity and the results of the public record request to determine how many handicap parking placards have been issued in recent years.
