ThisWeek CW 10/02/2014
http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/canalwinchester/news/2014/09/29/canal-winchester-city-eyes-parking-limit-for-commercial-vehicles.html
Canal Winchester City Council will vote Oct. 20 on an amendment to city code that officials hope will provide a permanent solution to what has become a rolling commercial vehicle parking problem.
The amendment, if approved, would place a two-hour limit on parking commercial trucks anywhere in the city, unless special permission is granted.
An ordinance to prevent commercial parking on Howe Industrial Parkway was before council at its Sept. 15 meeting, but was withdrawn after Law Director Gene Hollins suggested it was too site-specific to deal with the problem adequately.
Earlier this year, the city approved regulations for commercial vehicles parking overnight in the Walmart lot and at other retail businesses off Gender Road. Public Works Director Matt Peoples and Development Director Lucas Haire said business owners and residents near Howe Industrial Parkway have been complaining about access issues and noise in that area, because of the number of semi-trucks parking along both sides of the street.
Haire worked with the businesses to help develop language in the now-withdrawn ordinance to impose limits on parking commercial vehicles along Howe Industrial Parkway.
Hollins said by addressing the issue within current law as opposed to using a new site-specific ordinance, the city will prevent the operators of vehicles currently parking overnight on Howe Industrial Parkway from parking on other streets.
“Instead of just doing a Band-Aid solution and shifting the problem around, we took the existing parking ordinance and left the recreational vehicle limitations untouched — we’re not trying to change any of that — and redid the portion related to commercial vehicles to expand that citywide,” Hollins said.
He explained to council that because Canal Winchester is now a city, there are provisions in the Ohio Revised Code related to citywide parking ordinances that were previously unavailable to the community when it was a village.
“We’re now able to look at what’s in ORC, so in code, instead of bringing in no-parking zones and things like that into council every time, council can authorize the director of public safety, or in our case, public works, to post no-parking zones,” Hollins said. “So he could be delegated to post signage whenever we think there is a problem.”
The Oct. 20 council meeting will start at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 10 N. High St.