Indian Rocks Beach is cracking down on visitors who park illegally in the city after getting complaints from residents.
"We just had concerns from the residents about it getting a little bit out of control," said city manager Gregg Mims. "I think the commission took the more conservative step."
Earlier this month, city commissioners voted unanimously to double the parking fine from $20 to $40. The city also installed more 'no parking' signs and asked vacant lot owners to block off their property, according to Mims.
"We’ve implemented a number of no parking zones in the blocks immediately adjacent to the beach," he said. "We’re also going to add a part time person in the summer to actually help on the weekends, Saturdays and Sundays. Our code enforcement person that we have only works during the weekdays."
Mims said most of the complaints were about weekend and holiday visitors who were blocking in residents and leaving trash behind.
Resident Diane Flagg said she asked the city commission to do something about the problem.
"It’s become more and more difficult to get down some of our avenues," she said. "I’ve had trouble sometimes getting out of my driveway with cars circling around looking for parking spots."
Resident Billy Demoya said he worries about the kind of message the city is sending to visitors.
“It’s going to kill the tourism. Where are they going to park? There’s only like eight parking spaces per beach access," he said. "Besides the locals, I can’t now have any visitors because I don’t have a place to put them."
Mims said Indian Rocks Beach has 200 free public parking spots and their fine is now in line with other beach communities. The city manger said he still wants to encourage people to visit.
"The beaches that we have here belong to the public. They belong to everybody," Mims said. "I think it was more of a way of the commission trying to consider how we can control where people park but we still want to welcome people here because this is not our beach, it belongs to everybody."