The Marthasville Board of Aldermen plans to install no parking signs along west South Street in the city from One Street to Highway 47. 

They held discussions on a potential ordinance at their Dec. 18 meeting and felt that with the improvements to city streets and the addition of new businesses traffic would likely increase in the area. 

Alderman Leo Meyer first raised the issue, and was concerned that the road is too narrow to even allow parking on one side. 

“If we want to make no parking areas that we talked about earlier, along South Street where the newly paved street is, we need to pass some ordinances,” said Mayor David Lange. 

South Street is one of several in Marthasville that has been, or will be, repaved as part of a larger street improvement project in the city. 

Lange did concede that since part of the street was widened through the project, that section is wide enough to accommodate street parking and should be excluded from any ordinance regulating parking. 

“The area down there between One Street and Two Street, … that to me needs to be no parking on both sides of the street,” said Lange. “The block between Two and Three Street is where we made the street wider.”

From there, the discussion led to regulating parking on other streets in the city but board members decided those conversations could wait until after they saw the impact of prohibiting parking on South Street. 

The blocks they plan to regulate parking on are as narrow as 23 feet, giving traffic in opposite lanes very little space to work with if part of the road is obstructed by parked vehicles. The block that they plan to exclude from the parking ordinance has been widened to 36 feet, providing ample space for street parking. 

“That doesn’t mean you can’t stop and come over and make a delivery or something, but we don’t want a car parking on there,” said Lange. 

Lange and the aldermen requested that City Attorney Mark Piontek prepare a no parking ordinance that they planned to pass at their Jan. 15 meeting.