Whatever you think of start-up tech culture, they’ve got chutzpah.

MonkeyParking, the Rome-based startup whose iPhone app is used to auction off public parking spaces in San Francisco, is refusing City Attorney Dennis Herrera‘s order for the company to halt operations here.

In a newly released statement, MonkeyParking CEO Paolo Dobrowolny, derided Herrera’s cease and desist letter as “an open violation of free speech.”

“I have the right to tell people if I am about to leave a parking spot, and they have the right to pay me for such information,” Dobrowolny said.

Herrera, in a letter sent Monday, said MonkeyParking’s business model violated the city’s Police Code, which prohibits the sale or lease of city streets or sidewalks, and ordered the company to halt operations by July 11.

Herrera contends MonkeyParking creates “a predatory private market for public parking spaces.” He is also cracking down on two similar smartphone apps that exchange money for parking spaces.

MonkeyParking, like at least one of the other apps, ParkModo, contends it’s not selling city parking spaces, only information about them, and that the city was improperly trying to apply a “pre-shared economy” law to a “shared economy service.”

Herrera spokesman Matt Dorsey described that justification as “wildly inventive verbal gymnastics.”

“Let’s be honest. It’s like a prostitute saying she’s not selling sex — she’s only selling information about her willingness to have sex with you,” Dorsey said. “It’s semantic hair splitting — and it’s absurd.”

The company’s value is wholly premised on having paying members block access to parking spots on public streets until another paying member can replace the seller in the same spot, Dorsey said.

“It’s a members-only parking … scheme,” Dorsey said. “It auctions off access to a public space for private profit, and it is patently illegal under San Francisco’s Police Code.”

Herrera is threatening a lawsuit seeking damages of $2,500 per violation if MonkeyParking continues operating.

John Cote is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jcote@sfchronicle.com, Twitter: @johnwcote