By LISA SIMPSON STRANGE
Glasgow Daily Times
GLASGOW —
Glasgow City Council members tabled a proposed ordinance to increase parking time around the square during their meeting Monday night.
Council member Brad Groce sponsored the ordinance that would change the time limit for parking on the square from one hour to two hours because he said many times one hour just wasn’t long enough for people to conduct their business, dining and/or shopping on the square.
“I believe in certain situations an hour is not enough (time),” he said.
Groce has an insurance agency located on the south side of the square.
Two men who also have businesses on the square, Tim Doyle and Herman McCoy, spoke to the council about their concerns if the time was increased.
Doyle, owner and operator of the Tick Tock Clock Shop on the west side of the square, said his customers already have problems finding parking close to his business, approximately 85 percent of whom are senior citizens.
“I don’t understand why we would need to go from one-hour to two-hour parking. Right now, we’re having trouble even with the one-hour parking. It’s not that we’re losing that much business, but it doesn’t seem to be policed the way it should be,” he said.
McCoy, who owns Herman’s Watch & Jewelry Repair, agreed with Doyle.
“I think it will hurt us more than help us. You can’t find room for customers to park now,” he said.
The general consensus among council members, Mayor Darrell Pickett and the business owners was the issue of enforcing the time limit, whatever it might be.
Glasgow Police Chief Horace Johnson addressed the council about the lack of consistent monitoring of parking on the square until recently.
“Heretofore we have not had the resources available to do the parking enforcement,” he said.
But now that the department is essentially back to full force, officers have been writing tickets.
“I will tell you we have written several hundred parking citations over the last three or four weeks,” Johnson said. “We are about full staff now and so you’ll see more of that occurring irregardless of two-hour or one-hour (parking).”
A big contributing factor to the lack of available customer parking is employees who work in businesses and offices around the square and take up spaces each day for the entire day, council members said.
“There is abuse by some who work around the square that use those parking spaces all day long,” councilman Freddie Norris said.
Pickett said business owners are also partly responsible because they do not make their employees park elsewhere.
Council member Rhonda Riherd Trautman noted there is actually plenty of available parking in the area. A survey was completed that showed spaces all around the outside perimeter of the square.
“When I was Renaissance director we dealt with this a lot up here – people complaining about not having parking – and yet they were also the people who were allowing their employees to park in front,” she said.
Trautman added that consistent enforcement and a public relations campaign emphasizing the importance to downtown businesses for people to find places to park their employees elsewhere would help resolve the problem.
Councilman Tim Stutler made the motion after discussion on the issue to table the ordinance until more research could be done.
“It seems to me the problem, whether it’s one-hour or two-hour, is the people parking all day or for extended lengths. I believe it needs further review,” he said.
Pickett asked the public safety committee to review the concerns that were raised.
“Some of the things they need to address in the public safety committee is a revision of the parking ordinance,” Johnson said after the meeting. “I’ve asked the street department to mark some of the curbs in yellow and do some improvements, but they desperately need to make some revisions before we can do parking enforcement the way they would want to have it.”
Whether it is a change in the time limit, revisions to the original parking ordinance, the amount of police enforcement or employees not taking the parking spaces themselves, the end result must address the needs of customers, McCoy said.
“You want businesses on the square. You want retail shops on the square. If they can’t get customers in, they can’t make it. It’s that simple,” he said.
