Over the past month, the city has placed red stickers to parking meters warning drivers to not park in the available spot if the meter is not working. 

The stickers have caught the attention of the community, leading Lafayette County Supervisor Kevin Frye to inquire about them during Friday’s Downtown Parking Commission meeting. None of the other commission members were aware of the stickers and decided to shelve the topic to June’s regular meeting. 

The EAGLE spoke with Oxford’s Director of Parking, Matt Davis, on Friday about the stickers and how they originated. The answer is as simple as providing the community with more information. 

“Whenever we had a meter that had a dead battery or had an issue or just wasn’t displaying, they did not know what number to call,” Davis said. “So, we got a bunch of calls that would make it to (Oxford Police Department) and their dispatch, they got inundated with all these non-emergency calls. So, we just made the stickers to have just general information.” 

The sticker reads ‘METER ENFORCED 10AM – 12 AM MON-SAT’ and continues with ‘NO PARKING IF METER FAILS’ and provides a phone number at the bottom.  

While the information is useful, there are still people getting ticketed if they choose to park in those spots. If the meter does not work, the spot is considered not open and a vehicle is not allowed to use the space as free parking until the meter is fixed. People will have to find another of the 299-metered spots or one of the free parking spaces that might be available. 

Tickets will issue to vehicles parked in a spot where the meter has is down. If a person parks in a spot and the meter goes out after they have paid for their spot, a citation will also be issued. The citation can be reversed once information is provided to the commission that the spot was paid for before the meter malfunctioned. 

“What we’ll do is we’ll have a log of the meters and of where they paid and it’s no issue whatsoever to have the ticket dismissed,” Davis said. “If enforcement walks to a meter and it’s blank and there’s somebody still there we just have to all initially write a citation.”