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The City of Jackson will be reinstating time-restricted parking within the city starting in January, according to Mayor Scott Conger.

After a federal appeals court ruled in April that chalking tires without a warrant was a violation of the fourth amendment, city officials had no way to enforce the two-hour parking limit in many downtown parking spotsleaving the numerous two-hour parking signs to be little more than street-side dcor.

The lack of monitoring has caused a problem for local businesses, however, as downtown employees or residents fill short-term parking meant for shoppers, resulting in very little downtown parking for commerce or tourism.

Weve been working with the new downtown development director, and we met with downtown businesses and parking attendants about what we could do, said Conger, following deliberations about the change at the last city agenda review meeting. People will park and just be inside buildings all day. And we have a lot more business downtown now and more commerce, so we really needed to figure out a way to implement that again.

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The rules will now be enforced via license plate scanners, not chalk markings, which Conger says will be implemented by parking attendants with the Jackson Police Department.

Well be contacting businesses and downtown residents about it in the coming months, so theres little confusion, Conger said.

Frequent long-term downtown parkers arent out of luck, however, as Beth Ann Simpson, the new Jackson Downtown Development Corporation Director, is working with City Planning Director Stan Pilant on increased public awareness on free, unrestricted parking.

Were in the initial stages, but what we were hearing from people who live and work downtown was that theres not enough parking, Simpson said. Theres this perception of no parkingthats been a conversation for years. But there are actually plenty of parking spots. Its just a matter of educating people on where those spots are.

Simpson says its more of a conversation on convenience, and less on availability.

I think often people want to park right in front of the door theyre walking in, she explained. And so this is really an educational opportunity to just create better signage, both digitally and physically, to better communicate parking issues. It kind of feels like a great first big project for JDDC.

Throughout the coming months, the JDDC will be working to create a more accessible mapand better public signageto help tourists and residents find parking options amongst downtowns five public, unlimited parking lots.

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Were working on a better map of the five lots, and were creating better signage indicating where those are, she said. (Freeing up short term parking) encourages people who are just stopping in to downtown that they can park closebut those who are working downtown, or live in the buildings, they can park on the fringe.

Simpson stated that downtown residents will be given a special parking tag so they can park close to their residences.

Increasing walking downtown will also increase commerce, Simpson added.

We want to create walkability so that, when you park in the Jackson Energy Authority lot or something and you walk down an alleyway, you realize how walkable it actually is, she said. And it increases business trafficyou walk past businesses you didnt realize were there. So trying to educate folks through signage and digital communication that downtown is very walkable is really key.

While the final map wont be available by the January implementation, Conger is positive that the move will help downtown health.

This seemed like a logical first step, he said. Nothing we do is an end-all-be-alleverything we do is progress and trying to figure out what the next step is. So this is the first step in trying to enhance the parking of downtown.

Have a story to tell? Reach Angele Latham by email at alatham@gannett.com, by phone at 731-343-5212, or follow her on Twitter at @angele_latham.

Excerpt from:
Jackson downtown parking will return to two-hour limit - The Jackson Sun