T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY The parking configuration on 1st Avenue along the east side of the courthouse is still pull-in angle, but it will be changed to back-in as the downtown street reconstruction project progresses. During Monday night’s meeting, the city council discussed potentially drafting an ordinance setting one uniform parking configuration at the suggestion of Councilor Gary Thompson but ultimately did not proceed with such a course of action.

The now-familiar and always controversial topic of on-street angle parking downtown came back up for discussion during Monday night’s Marshalltown city council meeting as one councilor suggested converting all remaining pull-in angle parking stalls to back-in — though the idea failed to gain traction with the rest of the council.

Public Works Director Heather Thomas said the item was placed on the agenda in response to a request from Councilor Gary Thompson, who asked that city staff review the ordinance and remove the remainder of the pull-in stalls by converting them to back-in only. The locations that still have pull-in angle parking in town include the east side of Miller Middle School, the east side of the public library and several areas north of State Street.

Thomas said city staff’s recommendation was not to enact a blanket removal of all pull-in angle parking and that if there are specific areas the council would like to consider converting to back-in, they should be addressed on a case-by-case basis. Currently, the parking configurations are not set by ordinances but by staff direction and subsequently being signed and/or painted as such.

Thompson told the council that studies show back-in angle parking to be safer than pulling in straight once drivers learn how to do it.

“So the question (that) came up is ‘Why do we have both?’ If we’re telling the public that back-in angle parking is safer than pulling in straight, then why do we have both?” he asked. “Honestly, at this point in the game, I don’t really care. Choose one or the other. Either all the angle parking is head-in or all the angle parking is back-in. It just seems like if we have both… we will never get the staff trained or the citizens trained on how we want them to park.”

Councilor Mark Mitchell agreed with Thompson that it would be easier for citizens to adjust if all parking was the same and said he still sees drivers pulling into the back-in spots.

“I don’t know when they’re gonna start writing parking tickets for that, but on Saturday, I was uptown, and we had police officers drive right by and didn’t stop and do anything,” he said.

Thomas noted that the east side of the courthouse will eventually be converted to back-in, and Center and Main streets were chosen for the new configuration because of their higher traffic counts above 3,000 cars per day, higher pedestrian counts and sidewalks wide enough to support it.

“When you back-in angle park, generally you have a larger overhang of the vehicle on the sidewalk as opposed to pulling in. When you look at the areas north of State Street, those sidewalks are narrower. Many of them are six feet instead of the eight to 12 that we have downtown, and so that was part of the justification of why that switch, with the higher vehicles and the higher pedestrians and the higher shopping and retail and some of those things where you get into the back of your vehicle was recommended in the downtown area,” she said.

Because the pull-in stalls near Miller are in the center of the street, she felt it would be counterproductive to convert them in relation to the downtown implementation plan.

Councilor Jeff Schneider recommended leaving the current configurations in place and said he didn’t find the situation confusing at all.

“Whatever way the angle is on the side of the road you’re in indicates which way you’re supposed to park. I just don’t think it’s that hard,” he said.

Mayor Mike Ladehoff agreed that the proper parking configuration depended on the location and believed residents and shoppers can read signs and follow instructions. During the public comment period, Lonnie Hogeland said the people in Marshalltown “don’t know what’s going on” and wanted clearer communication on the parking configuration.

MPL Director Sarah Rosenblum also expressed her preference for keeping the pull-in parking option on the east side of the library, and Councilor Melisa Fonseca asked Thomas how an ordinance setting parking configurations would work. She reiterated city staff’s preference not to enact such a change, and Councilor Sue Cahill compared it to setting a uniform speed limit on every street in town.

“I think we have a lot of smart people in Marshalltown. They are going to figure it out. Follow the signs. Follow the trends of what the other people in the area are doing, and I think that we’ll get through this,” Cahill said. “This isn’t a hard one, and I think we need to make it as painless as possible.”

She recommended keeping things as they are with the eventual conversion of the east side of the courthouse to back-in parking when the time comes and looking at the other streets on a one-by-one basis in the future. Sensing that the consensus favored leaving things alone, Thompson refrained from making a motion to enact any sort of ordinance.

“I would say the consensus is we just leave things alone, and we ask the police chief to help teach, help train our citizens,” he said.

On Wednesday morning, the Marshalltown Police Department (MPD) Facebook page posted a “community high five” noting that when officers were on Main Street, all of the vehicles in back-in parking spots were parked correctly.