Brookings city councilors are rolling up their sleeves, trying to find ways to solve the community's parking problems.

The issue came to the council at the request of local residents. Too many vehicles left on city streets makes roadways congested and even unsafe for travel, they say.

Beverly Dobbs and others living in the Morningside Drive neighborhood want city officials to ban residential on-street parking from 2-6 a.m., at least during winter months.

"We are requesting this because we feel like we have a real parking problem in these older parts of town. " What we would really like to see is a parking regulation that addresses the fact that these rentals of unrelated individuals don't have enough off-street parking for the vehicles that they involve in their rentals."

Dobbs said on-street parking problems are not limited to older Brookings neighborhoods, where duplexes have been grandfathered in before stricter zoning regulations took effect. She says she's witnessed packed curbs in new subdivisions as well.

City Planning and Zoning Administrator Dan Hanson agreed. "There isn't a large discrepancy between the number of vehicles that are on the street in any one neighborhood versus another. We are a town that has a lot of on-street parking."

Hanson suggested soliciting more citizen input before the council considers implementing an overnight parking ban or other citywide rules. Alternating sides?

Some cities alternate the sides of the streets where vehicles can park overnight, so that plows are eventually able to clear roads from curb-to-curb after snowfall. "It's no different than what they do now for sprinkling their lawns. You have certain days you can't sprinkle and other days you can," Hanson said.

"So I think those would be options that you could localize to this issue for the citizens in that neighborhood who could see some relief without impacting the entire community. Because you certainly could run into a hardship in some areas based on the density of the neighborhoods."

Councilor Mike Bartley suggested the Traffic Safety Committee could take on the issue. He added that reducing or eliminating on-street parking in some neighborhoods will just push the problem onto other streets.

"It's like squeezing a balloon. That air's got to go somewhere, and it's going to expand into the next neighborhood. " If you move it out of one area, you're going to move it into another. You can't help but do that. That's just the nature of the beast with parking."

He added that a citywide traffic safety and parking study will likely cost the city money.

But Mayor Tim Reed said the parking problem was one that the council couldn't keep pushing around to other groups. "I think we're responsible to people to try and figure out what should be done." Parking permits?

The mayor added that some cities deal with parking problems by issuing on-street parking permits.

City Manager Jeff Weldon said that whatever decisions councilors make, they must keep in mind what kind resources will be necessary to enforce them.

Councilor Tom Bezdichek suggested experimenting with several different ideas to test them out. "I don't think we have to do all or nothing. Try a couple different things. " Try one, two or three of (the ideas), try them for a six- or 12-month period of time, and don't make it really expensive or complicated."

Creating a citizen's committee to study the issue was the proposal of Councilor John Kubal.

"This is a major issue, and I don't think we're going to solve it really quickly. When we dealt with some of the railroad issues, we put together a study group of citizens that came up with a pretty detailed product. I'd like to see something along those lines. " Citizen's committee?

"Get a citizen's committee that cuts across the entire spectrum of the city, let them get a look at it and let them see where it takes the issue, to where we can come up with a really well thought out (plan). That's going to take time, but I think we'd come up with something that maybe in the long run would solve the problem."

Dobbs agreed the issue needed to be studied carefully. She said she was in favor of creating both the 2-6 a.m. parking ban plus undertaking a comprehensive study.

By the end of their Tuesday discussion, the council took no action but planned to schedule the topic for a future work session.

Contact Jill Fier at jfier@brookingsregister .com.