Downtown Idaho Falls parking fines going up

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Story Published: Nov 23, 2009 at 7:14 PM MST

Story Updated: Nov 23, 2009 at 7:14 PM MST

By Danica Lawrence

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IDAHO FALLS - Parking, always the enemy wherever you decide to go out- And that's no different for Historic Downtown Idaho Falls- Citations are handed out constantly. Violators don't seem to mind the five-dollar fine... But what if it was a 25-dollar hit?

"it's only $5 right now and it's not effective, it's not working, people are still parking on the streets, and because it's the same cost to cost in a parking for a day they might as well just park on the street," says executive director for the Downtown Development Corporation, Shirley Chastain.

Chastain, manages the Business Improvement District. Shirley encourages people to use the free parking or the lots the DDC operates.

"parking has been an issue and we've got a lot of complaints from various people so we've brought in consultants, the results were there was not a parking shorrtage, what it was, was a management issue."

"there isn't effient parking around here I think they could make it a little bit more, you know, a bigger difference in our parking situations around here," says a concerned downtown parker.

The DDC wants to be clear- they care for the downtown employees and want them to stop parking along the street so customer parking has a higher turnover.

Downtown employees nare really important, because right they are feeling really left out; like you're just going to keep increasing these rates, you don't care about us, but we do," says Chastain.

"there's plenty of parking downtown but merchants need turnover on those parking spaces to keep their customers happy so they don't have to park too far away.

Next year, the DDC wants downtown shoppers and businesses to expect major changes, incl;uding new ways to monitor parking hours.

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