I hope those officials get their car tires slashed, and lawns sprayed with GroundClear.
Someone should also tell them that this is absurdity.
wow I assumed from the headline that she was parking her car like, halfway into her neighbors lawn. Nope! It was her own freaking lawn. Imagine owning land but not being allowed to be on it. fucking wild.
but hey companies stole 1.5 billion from their workers salaries between 2021 and 2023 but uh, best we can do is destroy this single moms finances.
Don’t live in Florida
Always good advice. Never live in an hoa while you are at it.
For those wondering how a parking fine can be 100K, it’s actually many smaller fines:
“However, one of the cars has to be parked slightly over the grass in Martinez’s yard, in violation of a local property-maintenance ordinance, which has led to a $250 fine every day since 2021”
Per/day fines like this are sort of bullshit. Imagine if speeding tickets were a certain amount per 100ft traveled above speed or some such. Oh, you drove 10mph over for 1500 feet…
I’d almost guarantee you could settle it for 1/10th of it (which is still a lot, granted) if not less. There needs to be some sort of proportionality in fines.
This isn’t really like that at all. It’s like of you went 10mph over every day for a year and they fined you for every day.
Except the fine itself and not having a cap and not being proportional are really really stupid+excessive.
i’d love it if per day fines had a max without our perdiems at work being affected
Takes a special kind of stupid to ignore enough letters to get to 100k in fines
Yeah, let’s blame anything except dumbass HOA fees. HOAs are a plague run by power tripping ghouls.
Or protesting them. Doesn’t need to be stupid. Bad choice? Sure.
By my math, $250/day for every day since Dec 31, 2021 would be $380,000 which could mean that they actually tracked each individual infraction (i.e. no fees on days they weren’t home) which means there’s zero chance of contesting this. Curious how much warning she got along the way before the fines really stacked up.
Also really curious what all the libertarians moving to Florida think of this.
Also really curious what all the libertarians moving to Florida think of this.
From the article:
Martinez
Well, that answers that!
The court of public opinion may well overturn this case, if local government still works they will cancel this obscene fine or replace their chiseling tax farming aristocratic local leaders.
Letter of the law is stupid. Repair the grass for like $50.
Repair the grass?
put cement over it
Not for $50
Pave paradise and put up a parking lot ?
Pretty sure Florida is the polar opposite of paradise, Joni.
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That’s shitty. In my town we aren’t allowed to park on the “yard” like in that town but here all she would have had to do is put a strip of gravel where the tire ran over and it’s legal.
But if it’s a four car driveway and they have four cars why don’t the cars fit?
Because American cars get more massive each year.
Yeah, I wonder about this. I have a similar situation with a “2” car driveway where I must park within a foot to clear the sidewalk. It’s inconvenient since sometimes you need to rearrange cars and you can’t be at all sloppy with parking.
I might have to park one car on the grass if I didn’t want to be inconvenienced by rearranging cars, if I couldn’t park closely, or if I had larger vehicles.
They don’t get wider. They have to fit in the same lanes that were there 30 years ago. They’ve only gotten longer and taller
I’ve had some people complain about not being able to easily park a large car which made me want to ask why they are driving such a high-difficulty car if their driving skill is low.
They get wider, on average, up to the limits of the roadways. It’s likely that they would’ve been fine if they had compact cars, or the typical cars of 20 years ago.
False. The track width of SUVs hasn’t changed in 20+ years.
edit: aww, some people don’t know how to look at spec sheets.
edit again: oops, I’m wrong.
Actually…your info may be false.
https://www.motor1.com/news/707996/vehicles-larger-than-ever-usa-europe/
Average vehicle width in the US increased from 73.4 inches in 2003 to 77.1 inches in 2023.
Ford Explorer: The 2005 model had front/rear track widths of 60.9/61.3 inches while the 2025 model has 66.9 inches for both front and rear track width. An increase of about 6 inches front and 5.6 inches rear.
Chevrolet Tahoe: Overall vehicle width increased from 78.9 inches in 2005 to 81.0 inches in 2025 which suggests track width along with it, although not spending more time searching specs.
My bad. Good research.
Track width isn’t relevant, vehicle width is.
So just big-ass fenders sticking out over the wheels?
They hated him, for he spoke the truth
It’s almost like some houses are older than 20 years…
Yeah but ffs dude
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Oh. Well, that’s not really a “four car driveway” IMO
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I can guarantee you an HoA that fines slightly parking in the grass is gonna have some rule about not using gravel on your front lawn
I’m certain they make them get signoff from neighbors, do an architectural application, and have it reviewed.
The minimum they’re likely to be able to get away with is repaving in whole or part and about 6 months to get the authorization.
The fines here are from the city
it’s becoming damn near impossible to buy reasonably sized cars here anymore
They are the same size they have been for 20+ years
edit: oops, I’m wrong
The story reads slightly different than the title.
Would it kill America to learn what adverbs are ?
They are strongly discouraged in journalism school, no lie.
ah, the land of the free
land of the fee
With paid subscription. Higher tiers unlock more!
Huh. I was expecting the comments to be a little more of the Fuck Cars crowd.
In my city there was a whole kerfuffle because people were fined for parking in their own driveway due to it not actually being a driveway, as there was no garage, despite having a curb cut. It sounds like this sort of thing has been changed under the new mayor.
I’m one of those Fuck Cars people but bankrupting single moms parked on their own property is not fixing anything. In the USA we place impossible burdens on individuals and then blame them for our systemic problems.
As they say, it costs a lot to be poor.
Not quite as straightforward as the headline would indicate. That said, little fiefdoms do exist and set out their rules to which people have signed up, by way of contract. Not something I think is good by the way!
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They knew about fines and still did nothing and continued to park this way? I mean, yeah. You are in a shitty situation. But knowing that you gonna get fined and keep doing it is fucking weird to me.
Couldn’t they widen driveway or something? Or Park somewhere near where parking is allowed?
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Nah, this shitty behavior by asshole bueracrats needs to stop
Agreed. It’s excessive and unreasonable.
