Franklin, TN Public Conduct: Loitering Rules (2026)

Section 15-615 regulates conduct inside any public parking lot or garage the City of Franklin owns, leases, or maintains, not the public streets generally. Subsection (1)(a) bars leaving a vehicle parked past its posted time limit, creating a traffic hazard, or obstructing safe passage, and caps any stay in a city garage at 24 hours, after which the vehicle may be impounded under Chapter 7's enforcement provisions; failing to follow any other posted rule in the lot or garage is separately unlawful. Subsection (1)(b) requires every vehicle to park head-in only, and subsection (1)(c) folds in the whole of Title 15, Chapter 6's general stopping, standing, and parking rules so they apply inside these facilities as well.

Subsection (1)(d) is the loitering rule itself: 'it shall be unlawful to loiter, congregate, or socialize' in any city-owned, leased, or maintained public parking lot or garage, a flat prohibition with no time threshold or intent element written into the text, unlike the neighboring vehicle rules that key off posted times or 24 hours. Subsection (2) carves out one exception, city-owned vehicles are not subject to the timed parking requirements, but that exception does not touch the loitering ban, which applies to people regardless of whether they arrived by city vehicle.

Because subsection (1)(c) pulls in the rest of Chapter 6, enforcement of the parking-related prohibitions in the same section follows the same illegal-parking and presumption-of-responsibility framework the chapter uses citywide, at §§ 15-616 and 15-703.