Sweetwater commission considering time restriction on parking downtown

The Sweetwater City Commission is looking into the possibility of restrictions on parking in downtown.

Ordinance 1045 would prevent vehicles from occupying space in front of downtown businesses in Sweetwater while the driver of the vehicle isn’t around.

“This is to prevent people from blocking businesses (with their vehicles) when they aren’t there for shopping,” said Sweetwater City Administrator Jessica Morgan. “The on-street parking is for people who are shopping in the downtown area. We don’t want people to leave their vehicles overnight or long periods of time.”

Morgan stated the hope of the ordinance is to prevent vehicles from being left there unattended.

“We have had several different things happen downtown over the past year where people were kind of blocking entrances to city businesses. Some of those things are protected things, such as speech, but the issue is that they can’t just sit in the parking spots and block businesses,” Morgan noted. “Basically what this ordinance does is limit the parking to three hours unless they live or will be staying the night in the downtown district.”

She stated that the ordinance also states that people cannot place signs that would request others to honk their horns, yell or be unreasonably loud or harsh.

“We are trying to keep the peace of the downtown district,” Morgan said. “This ordinance will need a second reading and that will happen in the January meeting.”

According to Morgan, this ordinance probably wouldn’t cause any major changes for the downtown area.

“This will probably be more reactive than proactive, meaning that something comes up from complaints or if citation for disturbing the peace isn’t enough,” she noted. “This ordinance isn’t in direct response to any one particular incident, but there were several different things that have happened downtown, particularly in the last year, that we felt probably needed to be addressed in an ordinance.”

The first reading of the ordinance happened during the recent Sweetwater City Commission meeting. Those who are interested in seeing the thoughts of city commissioners can view the previous meeting on the city’s YouTube channel. Meeting minutes are also available on the city’s website.