Last Thursday morning, city workers were busy jackhammering and installing four new No Parking Anytime signs along the 100 block of Main Street.
Within a couple of hours, officers with the Indianola Police Department were writing tickets.
The section of street, which includes several merchants, has apparently been a No Parking zone for years, but the city had been lax in enforcing it.
That is until a recent meeting of the Indianola Board of Aldermen, where the city fathers made it clear they wanted that side of the street shut off to parking.
Now that the city is handing out tickets to violators, businesses like Goldberg’s, Indianola Floral Design, Doc’s Gospel & Books and The Enterprise-Tocsin are dealing with finding solutions to both customer and vendor parking.
“If you didn’t have any commercial business on this side of (the street), it would be different,” said Debbie Allen, owner of Indianola Floral Design.
Allen said she doesn’t mind the No Parking from a customer aspect, but she said she frequently receives deliveries from vendors with large trucks, who will now have to park on an adjacent street.
“People should not park there, but we need to have our loading zone block,” Allen said. Indianola Mayor Steve Rosenthal said this week that he plans to bring the issue back up with the board during next Monday’s regular meeting. He said he does not have a problem with a 15-minute loading zone, but he would have to discuss it with the city aldermen.
Jerome Goldberg, owner of the corner retail store Goldberg’s, said he is opposed to taking potential customer parking.
“If you take away parking places, you’re taking away potential customers,” Goldberg said. “To me, that’s where your sales tax revenue comes from in Indianola.”
The city has given no indication it will budge on the No Parking zone, but merchants will have to wait until next week to find out if loading will be allowed on the stretch.
