'Parking limits should be policed'

ALSTONVILLE retailers want the two-hour timed parking limit in the main street to be better enforced, while Lennox Head businesses want restrictions scrapped.

Danny Slattery, owner of Alstonville Quality Meats, is demanding that Ballina Shire Council rangers start policing the two-hour parking limits in the township’s main street, saying too many people are ignoring the posted time restrictions. . Picture: Jerad Williams

ALSTONVILLE retailers are calling for the two-hour timed parking limit in the main street to be better enforced, while Lennox Head businesses want restrictions scrapped.

Danny Slattery, owner of Alstonville Quality Meats, said the parking situation was not monitored.

“I fought to get this two-hour limit, but the rangers never come up here,” he said.

“If we’re going to have a limit it needs to be policed, otherwise people park in the main street all day. It takes away from our businesses.

“I also think we need a 15-minute zone so that people can duck into the newsagent to get their paper, or into my shop to pick up their meat.”

Peter Mehan, president of the Alstonville-Wollongbar Chamber of Commerce, agreed the parking should be strictly enforced.

He said a lack of available parking spaces in the main street was ‘another way of turning people away’.

“The parking cop might come up for two hours, but it’s a two-hour limit,” Mr Mehan said.

He also said some of the offending motorists were people who worked in Alstonville’s CBD.

Mr Mehan said retailers were the ones who were most affected by the lack of turnover of parking.

No one from the Ballina Shire Council’s regulatory services group was available to comment yesterday, but general manager Paul Hickey said rangers did go to Alstonville to check the parking.

“There are a lot of areas the rangers need to cover,” he said.

“We only have two rangers at the moment, but the council has put the resources in the 2010/11 budget for an additional ranger.”

In Lennox Head, timed parking was introduced last year, but it has not been successful, according to Chamber of Commerce president Louise Owen.

“The monitoring of it is absolutely non-existent,” she said.

“It’s absolutely useless.

“The only thing timed parking has done is move about three cars out of the main street that belonged to residents of the main street.

“It’s made no difference to the parking situation. People still park in the main street for hours.

“We didn’t even want it in the first place and we still don’t want it.”

Originally published as 'Parking limits should be policed'