Parking rights curtailed

Residents with shoppers permits will have their parking privileges curtailed to help prevent downtown employees and merchants who live in the city from monopolizing prime parking spaces.

The City Council voted Tuesday to limit shoppers permit holders to three hours of parking in any 12-hour period when parking meters are in operation. The goal is to stop the merchants and their employees who have the permits from shifting spaces to get all-day parking in heavily congested areas during peak hours.

“We want to free up spaces so customers can use them rather than them being occupied by employees,” City Manager Ken Frank said. “One of the favorite tricks is to move every three hours. If they have shoppers permits, the city doesn’t get any [meter] revenue.”

Notification of the change will be sent along with shoppers permits, scheduled to be mailed by the city this month.

“Shoppers permits cost money whether people park downtown or not,” said Larry Nokes, a resident with law offices on Ocean Avenue who opposed the change.

This is not a new problem and relocating employee parking is not a new solution.

“But it is still being resisted,” Frank said.

The proposed limit will make it easier to monitor employees’ serial parking, according to Frank.

Enforcement will be stepped up, but occasional violators will not be targeted, he said.

“We are looking for people who violate it every day,” Frank said.

Chamber of Commerce spokesman Pat Barry said chamber board members were iffy about the proposal.

“Some believe this is a good solution to a difficult problem, while others feel this could be a burden to shoppers spending the afternoon in the downtown,” Barry said.”

Downtown employees have alternatives, he said.

“The city provides long-term parking opportunities at the rate of $10 a month in the old city employee lot off season and at the ACT V lot in summer, [for] $55 per month in the Lumberyard Parking Lot and a business parking permit allowing all day parking along parts of Cliff Drive,” Barry said. “The problem is how to get more of the business people to use the alternatives and less people abusing the shoppers program.”

Frank said the new restriction would not prevent employees or business owners from parking for three hours in prime spaces on Forest Avenue, but it will make all day parking difficult.

“I don’t like this law, it just doesn’t feel right,” Nokes said. “And I would like to see more people here than Pat Barry and me.”

BARBARA DIAMOND can be reached at (949) 494-4321 or [email protected].