Parksville council is looking for more details to make a decision about resident only parking areas.
There are currently small sections of eight city streets with “resident parking only” signs, but the city doesn’t have a decal system to identify resident vehicles so they cannot enforce the signs.
With a trickle of complaints to the city about people parking on residential streets, council is feeling pressure to do something even though most who spoke at Wednesday’s council meeting said it doesn’t seem to be a problem and would rather it was left as-is.
Mayor Chris Burger said he was torn, he “would love to leave well enough alone,” but they do have to address the complaints.
Staff presented three options: remove the signs; implement a decal purchase program and create enforceable resident only parking areas, or; to leave the signs with the understanding they will not be enforced.
“The resident only signs we now have are similar to a placebo; they look like they mean something, but in reality they have no legal impact,” states a staff report to council.
Most of the residents who spoke were from Gerald Place and Jenkins Place across from Ballenas Secondary School where the problem of students parking on residential streets led to the first council-ordered signs.
The residents said that since then the school has helped deal with the issue, but chief administrative officer Fred Manson and the staff report point out they do get complaints from some of the other areas with those signs, specifically around Springwood school and park.
Councillors Peter Morrison and Marc Lefebvre both asked staff for more details about the complaints and whether they could ban parking from just one side of a street or other options targeted specifically to the problem areas.
Staff was asked to bring more details back to a future meeting.