Council Discusses Parking Ordinance

Area News Editor

news1@ulyssesnews.com

The Ulysses City Council discussed a parking ordinance July 24 involving semi trailers and recreational vehicles, boat trailers, utility vehicles and commercial vehicles blocking sidewalks and streets within the city.

“There’s been some confusion about what the law was as far as parking, particularly commercial vehicles and recreational vehicles on city streets or on private driveways in a residential zone,” said city administrator Luke Grimes. “Like the chickens, that’s something that hasn’t been strictly enforced and I just want to make sure the council is behind this ordinance before we go about strictly enforcing it because it’s, without a doubt, going to disrupt some people’s lives when we do it.”

Grimes said he hasn’t heard any complaints, it’s just something he noticed, and there’s been a discrepancy between what people thought the law was and what it actually is.

“I took an oath to uphold the laws of this town the (police) chief took an oath to uphold the laws of this town, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Grimes said. “In the discussions that the mayor and I had, there was the feeling that it was awfully strict.”

Council members said they haven’t hard any complaints about parking, only complaints about truckers starting their diesel engines and letting them run in cold weather.

As the ordinance reads, commercial vehicles are not allowed to be parked on residential streets.

“I feel like we need to change it so that whatever we have on the books is what we’re enforcing,” said councilman Caleb Woods.

“My opinion would be ‘not allowed on the street,’” Grimes said. “If you can get in your driveway, OK. If we’re going to change it, let’s keep it prohibited on the street and make sure they have a driveway that can fit a truck.”

Mayor Tim McCauley said tat what the truckers bring to the community is phenomenal.

“I think we need to be a little lenient,” McCauley said. “The streets, fine, but we should have the say that you can’t park that in your driveway (unless) they can get it in far enough (that) it’s not blocking the sidewalk.”

The council agreed that the ordinance needs to be revised and Grimes agreed ti bring a revised ordinance to the council at a later date.

•The council passed Resolution 2024-5 setting a hearing for Sept. 11 for property at 300 South Joyce Street, which the city wants to have condemned.

“There are four different liens on that property,” said city attorney Lynn Koehn. “There’s a new guy that was going to buy it that now has an interest in that property (and) he’s probably  getting another lien on the property because he’s probably not going to get his money back.”

Koehn said there’s about $1000,000 worth of liens already on the property.

“In order for us to do anything to that property, we need to go through this process so we can give notice to those lien holders (and) to anybody that we know has an interest on that property for an actual hearing,” Koehn said.

He said that whatever money the city spends on the property it won’t get back because the city will be the seventh person with a lien on the property and it’s not selling for more than $1000,000.

“To get this taken care of, it’s going to ultimately cost the city some money,” Koehn added.

Councilman Ken Warner said any money the city spends will be well worth it.