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Helen discussed problems revolving around municipal parking at their monthly meeting.
Cowboys and Angel owner Chris Williams came before the Helen City Commission on Tuesday to address problems involving municipal parking.
“As a resident of Helen, as a business owner of Helen, as a former employee, we are constantly fighting battles to keep the reputation of our businesses, of ourselves, and the city to where they think they should be. A lot of people go back and forth on where they can park and where they can’t park,” said Williams.
He went on to say that his employee parking has been taken away and now his employees must park in municipal parking. This has resulted in an employees car being towed despite him being a resident and employee of Helen. “As with anything in life, crazy things happen. His tag was
was stolen, he made a report with the police department, so he did everything that he was trying to do, that he knew to do to let everyone know,” said Willams. His car was towed last weekend due to an event in municipal parking and this resulted in paying $250 to get the car back.
Williams would like to see the city implement something so a situation like this does not happen again in the future. He would like the Helen Downtown Development Authority (DDA) to work together with the commission to try to resolve parking issues.
Commissioner Steve Fowler asked Williams what his solution to this problem would be. “My solution would be a parking deck,” said Williams. Fowler asked if he thought it should be where the current municipal parking is, and Williams agreed that could be an option.
Mayor Fred Garmon suggested that for the time being, the city could issue permits and stickers to put on cars so that residents and employees would not be towed when they should be able to park for free. Williams said, “I think the biggest thing is that people don't really understand all of the rules, and some people say there's no overnight parking in municipal parking, and as far as I know there are some places you can't overnight park in municipal but as a full gambit that's not correct.”
This item will be discussed by the DDA at a meeting next week to see if a parking deck project between the city and the DDA would be possible in the future. Commissioner Jeff Ash said, “When I saw this on the agenda I thought this was a real good idea to just get started talking about it, there might be some grant money out there to go with a medium sized bond issue.”