SOUTHEASTERN N.C. — The beach parking season is now open for business, however, some people have reported that even after paying the meter, they find tickets tucked into their windshields.
Wrightsville Beach’s program is operated by Pivot Parking, and between March 1 to Oct. 31, 2025, more than 3,000 citations were dismissed. While it could have been for errors of time discrepancies or incorrect license plates being read, the number is about three times the amount of citations appealed or dismissed last year in Surf City, another municipal customer of Pivot. Wrightsville Beach, though, has roughly 1,000 more parking spaces than Surf City and saw almost six times the number of transactions.
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Port City Daily spoke to four people who have expressed issues with erroneous citations from Pivot Parking. One woman asked to remain anonymous and will be called Regina for the purposes of this article. She told Port City Daily, despite paying $12.50 for parking on March 3, she received a $50 ticket after parking her car along East Salisbury Street near Johnnie Mercers Fishing Pier to walk on the beach. Vehicle owners have the choice between paying hourly or all-day rates, between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., or purchasing visitor parking passes for the week.
Regina paid for two hours at 2:13 p.m., but the ticket was issued almost 30 minutes before her meter expired, at 4:13 p.m. There were no discrepancies between the license plate she entered when paying and the one listed on the citation, as confirmed by Port City Daily.
Regina arrived at the Pivot Parking’s office in Wrightsville Beach 15 minutes before it closed and approached a woman behind a glass window. She recounted to the Pivot employee her conundrum; the employee took the ticket to the back office, out of view, and returned to tell Regina it was dismissed.
“I said: ‘What do you mean it’s been taken care of?’” Regina recalled, explaining the employee responded: “‘You just go on. It’s been taken care of.’ I said: ‘But I don’t have anything in writing.’ She said: ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s gone.’”
Regina noted in the 10 years she has walked the beach weekly, this is the first time she has experienced a wrongful citation. Though, another person spoke on background to Port City Daily with a similar experience last year. His citation was issued due to a parking employee noting his meter had expired, despite having time left; it also was dismissed.
He said he was met with a “non-answer” when he asked a Pivot employee: “Aren’t people looking at the time? It wasn’t expired,” to which he allegedly was told it was simply a mistake.
A Pivot Parking employee at the Wrightsville Beach office declined to speak to the Port City Daily, saying it was against company policy. Pivot Parking’s Wrightsville Beach program manager Josh Yates and the Town of Wrightsville Beach spokesperson Bailey Hartsell both directed questions from the outlet back to one another.
This included inquiries into how parking enforcement officers are trained, if the company’s digital system had a safeguard to prevent ticketing vehicle owners before a meter is expired, if Pivot Parking receives more compensation for violations issued and what kinds of errors by parking enforcement officers result in appeals or dismissals. Answers were not received by press.
The company’s regional vice president for North Carolina, Austin Ehlers, also did not respond.
Wrightsville Beach had roughly 665,000 total transactions overall during the 2025 season, which brought in $7.9 million, among its 1,882 parking spots.
Pivot Parking keeps record of the citations issued by the company’s parking enforcement officers. In Wrightsville Beach, 15,220 violations were issued between March 1 and Oct. 31, according to Pivot data; 9,847 were paid, totaling $630,016, and 2,554 had not been remitted. Almost 3,600 violations were appealed or dismissed.
That was roughly a 97% increase from 2024 when the program had 1,807 citation appeals out of 15,800 total tickets issued.
During Pivot Parking’s presentation to Wrightsville Beach aldermen on Dec. 17, Tina Reid, co-founder of Pivot Parking, noted the period of time people can dispute a parking violation was extended to five days from three early 2025 to allow more time for customers. Reid explained the extension as the reason more citations were appealed in 2025 than 2024, and why fewer ticket fees were collected in 2025 than in 2024.
Ticket fees are $50, but can increase to $60 after five days and $70 after 12 days.
One appeal in 2024 came from Tuan Truong, who wasn’t able to plead his case because he missed the three-day window and ended up paying $70. Truong said he paid for a full day’s worth of parking for $25 to $30 during the summer.
“The parking meter guy read my plate wrong with one number and he ticketed me,” Truong said. “Then when I called in to get it disputed, they said I can no longer dispute and had to pay the fine.”
Port City Daily also confirmed with Ronnie McCluskey a comparable event during the 2025 parking season. She took to social media with her concerns, saying she paid $30 in parking, typed in her license plate correctly, but the system allegedly defaulted to another plate. She posted an image of the citation she was issued at nearly 1 p.m., despite saying she paid for parking until 3:26 p.m. (a receipt showing how much time she paid for was not posted).
Pivot Parking is also the operating company for Carolina Beach’s and Surf City’s parking programs. Port City Daily submitted a request to Carolina Beach to obtain a copy of the town’s contract and data regarding the 2024 and 2025 parking program but did not receive info by press.
Surf City responded showing the program brought in $1.6 million in 2025 and $1.5 in 2024.
According to 2025 numbers, there were 97,000 transactions among its 800 parking spots managed and enforced by Pivot Parking. Surf City’s program received almost 5,500 written violations, with 1,326 appeals made and 958 dismissed. 3,395 citations were paid by the end of October; previous Port City Daily reporting shows 11% of citation funds made up the parking revenue in the town that year.
The citation number in Surf City is about 115% less than Wrightsville Beach, though Surf City’s parking program has fewer hours of enforcement, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its rates are similar: $5 an hour, $25 a day, and $80 a week.
Surf City 2024 numbers are only slightly down compared to 2025. There were 5,100 citations written in 2024, with a little more than 3,000 paid. These numbers include citations dismissed, according to Pivot Parking’s 2024 presentation.
In Surf City, Pivot Parking receives a monthly management fee equal to 4.75% of revenue earned by the program up to $1 million. The company also gets 2.85% of any revenue made after the first $1 million.
According to Pivot Parking’s first contract with Wrightsville Beach signed in 2020, Pivot receives compensation for services and to cover operational costs, budgeted by the town each year. The town is then able to collect the first $3.2 million made from the program. After the initial $3.2 million, Pivot collects 2.85% of gross revenue.
In 2023, a new contract stipulation was added, noting the threshold of money paid first to the town increased to $3.4 million, but Pivot’s percentage stayed the same. In 2025, the gross revenue of parking was roughly $7.9 million. The town made $3.4 million and then the excess of $4.475 million was broken down, with Pivot receiving a portion.
Tickets issued erroneously get fielded directly to the parking office next to Wrightsville Beach Town Hall or can be disputed online here. The Surf City citation appeal form can be found here.
[Ed. note: The piece has been updated to include WB visitor passes are weekly, not annual. Port City Daily regrets this error.]
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