Downtown Meadow Lake. (Matt Ryan/meadowlakeNOW)

By Angela Brown

No more two-hour limit

Meadow Lake removes parking restrictions downtown

Nov 30, 2023 | 4:07 PM

People who like to park and shop in downtown Meadow Lake don’t have to rush.

The City of Meadow Lake recently removed the two-hour parking limit downtown in response to the demand. One spot on the north side of the post office remains as one-hour parking.

The city sent a survey to the downtown business core area that saw about 80 responses related to the two-hour parking restriction that was in effect.

Mayor Merlin Seymour said the majority of people were in favour of ditching the parking restriction. The city opened up the downtown, so there is no time restriction.

“There was a very high percentage of people who did not want the parking restrictions,” he said. “We decided to amend our decision and remove the two-hour parking limitations.”

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The City first looked at removing the two-hour parking limit after hearing from some concerned residents.

“We just felt it was a constraint,” Seymour said. “Probably the biggest issue was that people are going for, for example, a haircut or a hairdo. Sometimes they take longer than two hours. Personally, mine takes about three minutes; I have very short hair. We just made the decision that if the downtown business people want to open it up, then we would follow their suggestions.”

He said the two-hour parking bylaw had been in place for a while. The city happened to have a seasonal bylaw officer who was doing more enforcement at the time. Since the signage was up, the officer was just enforcing the parking bylaw.

“It kind of upset a few people,” Seymour said. “My take on it, I was a big proponent for two-hour parking because I felt if people were, whether it be business owners or staff that are parking on the street, it’s possibly prohibiting potential customers from coming into their business. My thought basically was, if there is a whole bunch of vehicles parked in front of a place where you want to go, you’re probably not going to go there, or come back at a later time. That was my rationale behind it.”

Seymour originally thought the two-hour parking rule made sense, to prevent business owners and staff from taking up parking places that potential customers could use instead. There was also an option on the survey for four-hour parking instead.

“But the business people came back and said: ‘No, we want to get rid of the [restricted] parking,’ so that’s what we did,” he said.

The mayor mentioned that no one from the community has come to speak to council since the two-hour parking was lifted.

The municipality still has a city-wide policy in place that no vehicle can stay parked in the same spot for more than 24 hours at a time.

“That was never changed,” Seymour said. “Probably the biggest [issue] is in the wintertime with snow removal. If there are vehicles parked there, it’s really tough for the operators to clear the snow out. I haven’t seen a whole bunch [of infractions] at this point, but probably the biggest thing is just for snow removal, and the safety of keeping the streets clean.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @battlefordsnow