A legal battle over a Florida county’s truck parking ordinance banning commercial vehicles at truck drivers’ homes has come to an end.
Senior Judge Richard Oftedal of the 15th Judicial Circuit Court in Florida granted final summary judgment to Palm Beach County in a case challenging its truck parking ordinance. The court order drives a nail in the coffin of local truckers’ efforts to legally park their trucks at home.
At the center of the controversy are amendments to the Palm Beach County Unified Land Development Code that led to residents of The Acreage being fined for parking heavy vehicles on their property. Local truck drivers who had been able to park their trucks at home for nearly two decades felt blindsided and accused county officials of gentrifying the area in an attempt to push out blue-collar residents.
When the county’s Unified Land Development Code was established in 2003, vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds were prohibited from parking in residential districts. However, the code explicitly excluded land on agricultural residential districts from the truck parking ordinance, which includes The Acreage. Additionally, the code prohibited commercial vehicle parking on land used as a home occupation.
For nearly 20 years, truck drivers understood the ordinance to exclude The Acreage from the truck parking ordinance. That was supported by enforcement of the ordinance, as truckers were never fined for parking their truck at home. That is, until recently.
In 2019, Palm Beach County amended its truck parking code by getting rid of The Acreage’s exclusion.
Another amendment a year later added clarification that “resulted in a wave of enforcement, violations, citation and fines” to truckers who lived in The Acreage and had been parking their trucks at home for nearly 20 years, according to the lawsuit.
Truck drivers had at least one supporter on the Palm Beach Board of County Commissioners. Last year, Commissioner Sara Baxter recommended an exception for The Acreage that would have allowed two 80,000-pound trucks on each lot, according to The Palm Beach Post.
That request was denied. Instead, the county changed the truck parking ordinance to allow two 16,000-pound vehicles at any home-based business in The Acreage.
Last April, Jorge Alfaro and Clare Dougal, truck drivers who live in The Acreage, sued the county over its amended truck parking ordinance. They argued that the new rules constitute a “regulatory taking” of property and have resulted in a lower property value.
However, the county argues that truck parking has always been prohibited in The Acreage.
Even though the town’s zoning district was exempt before 2019, the home-based business commercial vehicle parking ban applied to the country across the board. Both Alfaro’s and Dougal’s property fell under the “home occupation” category.
Even if the 2019 ordinance at the center of the lawsuit were reversed, the county argued, the 2003 ordinance would kick back in. That ordinance also prohibits home occupation truck parking, thereby making trucks parked on their property illegal still.
Oftedal dismissed the claims, pointing to a four-year statute of limitations. The controlling ordinance in the case is the 2019 amendment. Alfaro and Dougal filed their lawsuit in 2024, five years later. Even if the complaint was timely, the court ruled the truck drivers “presented no competent evidence of financial loss, diminution in property value or impairment of vested property rights.”
The court also agreed that the 2003 ordinance prohibited truck parking at the truck drivers’ homes. Therefore, any relief from the 2019 ordinance “would be purely advisory and serve no practical purpose.”
Alfaro and Dougal have asked the court for a rehearing or to alter or amend the final summary judgment. That motion is pending. LL
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