By Susan Redden
sredden@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — The Carthage City Council will take another look this week at downtown parking. It will consider a proposal to temporarily rescind a two-hour parking limit on the square and in the surrounding area.
The change is proposed as a pilot project and will get first-round review during Tuesday’s council session. Under the plan, which was advanced by the council’s public safety committee, there would be no enforcement of a two-hour parking limit on the square and the surrounding area in January and February.
Councilman Bill Welch, committee chairman, cast the lone dissenting vote.
“I don’t oppose the change,” he said. “But I do believe there are some specialized situations that need to be considered.”
Mayor Jim Woestman said he thinks the council should support the committee’s recommendation.
“I think we should try it for a while and see what happens,” he said. “I fully realize there are some special circumstances, but I think we can address them along the way. And really, we’re not eliminating anything.”
The way the ordinance is drafted, parking controls would return automatically after the trial period, unless the council takes other action.
Police Chief Greg Dagnan said he supports the trial period because he does not believe the current $1 fine for overtime parking is a deterrent. The council in May rejected a series of proposed changes, including hiking the fine to $15.
Dagnan said he surveyed downtown businesses to get their input on parking issues.
“It was about evenly divided, but there seems to be support for experimenting with eliminating the two-hour parking,” he said. “I do believe in some areas, we’ll have to make some adjustments that are more targeted.”
Revenues generated by the parking tickets fall far short of paying for the parking enforcement program, Dagnan said.
“Public safety isn’t supposed to make money,” he said. “But if it’s not coming close to breaking even and people don’t see it as a deterrent or a necessary service, then we need to look at it.”
The only objections that have been raised to the trial period have come from H.J. Johnson, a former councilman who owns two businesses in the downtown area.
“I’m not for it, especially if they make it permanent,” he said.
He said parking controls are the only thing that ensures access to his business in the 300 block of Lyon Street. And, he said he thinks there will be parking problems on the north and west sides of the square if no controls are enforced.
“It may not be a problem to start with, but during the spring and summer, it will become an issue,” he said.
Woestman said he believes eliminating parking controls “might work out if the employers and employees don’t park on the square.”
But Welch said lifting the enforcement probably will result in more courthouse workers parking on the square, rather than in free parking lots about a block away.
“I don’t think there’s a parking problem,” Welch said. “The area opened up a lot when the high school moved out of the downtown area.”
Tom Short, city administrator, said he believes even more parking spaces will be freed up in January, when the municipal court is to be moved from City Hall on the square to Memorial Hall.
