Hoping to please downtown Athens business owners and possibly increase sales tax revenue for the city, City Council members agreed Monday to buy $5,500 worth of downtown parking signs.

The signs will increase parking from two hours to three hours around The Square and on immediate side streets.

The city will also designate 10-hour parking further away from retail areas and prohibit overnight parking in city-owned parking lots and on-street spaces.

To better enforce parking limits, Athens Police Department has hired a part-time officer to enforce time-restricted spaces and issues tickets accordingly. The officer, who will work 29 hour a week, begins Monday, Police Chief Floyd Johnson said.

Fixing the downtown parking problem has been an issue over the years.

“It’s a critical issue,” Mayor Ronnie Marks told council members. “It is impacting merchants and it is impacting the revenue sales, thus it is impacting us (the city of Athens). We’re trying to find every way we can to deal with parking.”

He said merchants hear complaints from customers currently restricted to two-hour parking that if they go to a downtown restaurant and then walk around to shop, they can’t do it in two hours. The mayor said the city has considered everything from going back to parking meters to hiring the part-time officer to enforce parking.

“We’ve got a pretty serious problem but a lot of cities would love to have our problem,” Marks said.

Police will enforce the new parking rules once the signs are installed.

Questions

District 2 Councilman Harold Wales asked whether there would be three-hour parking signs posted on side streets such as Marion or Houston.

Marks said there are already plenty of signs but they say two-hour parking. (Those would be changed to reflect three-hour parking.) Marks also said some signs say two hours and some 10 hours.

“I don’t want them (the signs) bouncing all over the board,” the mayor said, meaning he wants the parking limits in an area to be clear to motorists.

District 1 Councilman Chris Seibert asked if there are any “blind spots” where motorists cannot not see parking limit signs.

Street Department Supervisor Dolph Bradford said there are 80 signs in the downtown neighborhood already.

Marks told council members merchants and shoppers had approached people in his office as well as council members and police officers about finding additional parking downtown, particularly around the Limestone County Courthouse Square and the immediate side streets.

Some merchants had reported a decrease in sales because parking spaces in front of their stores remain occupied throughout the day, possibly by people using the courthouse.

The city decided to take the steps after meeting with merchants and Athens Main Street and discussing the issue with city staff and county officials.

A letter from Marks and Johnson will be sent to merchants and various groups informing them of the changes.

The letter indicates there will be some leeway on overnight parking.

The letter says merchants may call the Police Department at 256-233-8700 if a parking pass is needed for a business owner or employee who needs to park overnight. Owners of restaurants that serve alcoholic beverages may also call police to report an impaired driver who needs to leave his or her vehicle parked overnight.

See Wednesday’s edition of The News Courier for more on Monday’s council meeting, which was ongoing at press time.