Chris Weir visits downtown Annapolis often from his home in Annapolis on errands. After one such trip earlier this year, he returned to find his car, along with others on the street, slapped with a parking ticket. Weir paid around $2 to park for 90 minutes.
He said he was near St. Johns College, falling into Parking District 1, one of two districts in Annapolis with residential areas that began charging to park three years ago. Soon after that change, Louisiana-based Premium Parking took over Districts 1 and 2, as well as the Hillman Garage when it reopened in 2023.
Weir went to the company’s Cathedral Street office to get the ticket voided, where he said he was told his ticket came from an issue with the ParkMobile app, which is used city-wide. Premium Parking did not respond to a request for comment.
“It delegitimizes all this parking if you’re just going to go around issuing tickets to people who have paid for parking, especially when they got rid of the meters a couple years ago,” Weir said. “And I know for a fact this ParkMobile app has been a total disaster, because there [have] been times in which it doesn’t even work for me.”
Mitchelle Stephenson, public information officer for the City of Annapolis, said issues with the app and public confusion were problems early on, but have since been ironed out. Although, even a year after, some residents were still unhappy with the changes.
“We have addressed complaints from the public regarding resident parking programs (ie, Residents Park Free). Early on, the codes were difficult and renewals took a long time to process,” Stephenson said in an email. “Now residents can be automatically renewed and the app maintains the parker’s data (eliminating the need to continually input the code). With that program, residents can get two hours (per day) of gratis parking in City garages.”
Stephenson said around 17% of the tickets issued in what she calls the concession area, Districts 1, 2, and Hillman, are voided. Around 26,300 tickets were distributed in that area during fiscal year 2025, which ended in June, making the city more than $353,000.
When the contract went into effect, Annapolis representatives said the purpose of the change was to fund the Hillman Garage as well as free up parking spaces for residents. Acting City Manager Victoria Buckland said the changes have worked.
“Like any urban parking program, downtown residents and visitors have had to make some adjustments, but we are seeing real success,” Buckland said in a statement. “Our goal has always been to strike a balance between the needs of residents, many of whom have no off-street parking, and the needs of businesses by encouraging turnover and pushing visitors to use our conveniently located garages. We see in the data that downtown visitors are migrating away from on-street parking and utilizing the garage more and more.”
Stephenson said Hillman Garage usage increased 18% from 2023 to 2024.
For Tom Krieck, an Independent Ward 1 Alderman candidate who is making parking reform a major part of his platform, the changes were not enough to help residents.
With city parking passes, residents can park anywhere, but Krieck wants a system to make sure residents have parking in front of their houses. Potentially needing to park far from the house could be difficult for seniors, he said, and discourages residents from purchasing electric vehicles for fear they would not find a spot to charge.
“You have to look back and say, ‘Okay, it didn’t work out. So how do I redesign it to make work out [for] the objective we were trying to accomplish?’ ” Krieck said. “We shouldn’t penalize residents for living there.”
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