AUGUSTA — City councilors will consider changes meant to make it more convenient for downtown residents to be able to park their vehicles overnight.
Councilors meet Thursday to hold the first of two required readings on changes to the city’s parking rules.
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The changes, like others made previously, are meant to help accommodate an influx of residents to the downtown area, where new apartments have been developed in multiple buildings. Many of those residents have cars or trucks they wish to park near where they live.
In November, councilors amended the city’s winter nighttime parking ban to allow vehicles to remain parked overnight on the left, or east, side of Commercial Street in the downtown area. Previously, overnight parking was banned on all city streets to allow for snow removal.
Downtown residents with cars may get residential parking permits from the quasi-municipal Augusta Parking District.
The changes would exempt downtown residents with residential parking permits issued by the parking district from the city’s ban on leaving a vehicle parked on a city street or in a municipal parking lot for a period in excess of 24 hours and from a ban on parking for longer than one hour on city streets between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
“It’s a tweaking of the parking ordinance to reduce the possibility of inconvenience for downtown residents, so they can park there during the winter when there might otherwise be parking bans,” City Manager William Bridgeo said of the changes. The changes “allow people to park on the east side of Commercial Street, unless they’re told they can’t due to snow removal operations.”
Councilors meet at 7 p.m. Thursday in council chambers at Augusta City Center.
Councilors are also scheduled to:
• adopt a forest management plan for city-owned wooded land, with revenues from proceeds of anticipated timber sales, as recommended by the plan, to go into a timber reserve account which could not be spent without council approval;
• make changes to two city tax increment financing districts, including modifications to a downtown TIF district to allow money raised in the district to help pay for an extension of the Kennebec River Rail Trail to the city’s waterfront park on the west side of the Kennebec River;
• hold a public hearing and consider granting a liquor license for Red Curry restaurant at the Bond Brook Mini Mall on Mount Vernon Avenue.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
kedwards@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @kedwardskj
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