A permit will soon be needed for those wanting to park on a crescent near Foothills Composite High School.
Okotoks town council passed a motion for the use of parking permits for Cimarron Crescent at its Jan. 7 meeting after hearing from a delegation about the large number of cars parked during the day on the street from students attending the nearby high school.
“We are concerned about parking on our crescent with students from Foothills Composite High School,” Cimarron Crescent resident Joyce Landis told council. “The students park in our crescent when there are clearly open spaces in the school parking lot.”
She added students often take up more space than is needed — two cars taking three spots for example
Landis also raised concerns about trash and students driving irresponsibly on the crescent.
It is not unprecedented as there are parking permits issued at nearby Woodhaven Drive.
A petition, with signatures from 17 of the 35 homes on Cimarron Crescent, was presented to Okotoks administration in November.
The petition recommended the parking permit zone on Woodhaven be extended to Cimarron Crescent.
As a result of the petition, Okotoks monitored the crescent for 16 days and found there are 31 parking spots on the street.
A report to council stated 24 to 31 vehicles park on the street during school hours and 11 to 20 park after school hours. The highest incident of non-residential vehicles — including commercial vehicles — was in the morning and afternoon.
It added most of the homes on the crescent have double-front attached garages and driveways, which provide four off-street parking stalls.
Councillor Tanya Thorn expressed a concern that the streets belong to the public, not the homeowners.
She said permits could cause precedence with other neighbourhoods with schools in their area.
“If we are going to look at permitting here, I am concerned about the number of other neighbourhoods that permitting would be a solution,” Thorn said.
She added with many of the Cimarron Crescent residents having four off-street parking stalls, if they were given two parking passes for on-street, they would have six parking spots.
“Which is different than every neighbourhood,” she said. “We need to discuss how many permits we are going to issue per
household.”
Thorn brought up the idea of parking time limits, possibly two or three hours, on the crescent rather than permits.
Coun. Matt Rockley spoke in favour of extending the parking permits for Woodhaven Drive to Cimarron Crescent.
“If that crescent is routinely full of non-residents parking during school days, that goes beyond the norm,” Rockley said. “That indicates to me there is a parking overflow problem from the high school.”
Lauren Ulmer, a Grade 12 student at the Comp, was legally parked on the crescent on Jan. 10.
“I don’t park here that often, maybe since the start of the year — you have to come early to get a parking spot here,” she said.
She will park in the school lot if she has to in the future.
“It sucks because if you park in the parking lot it takes longer to get out, you want to be able to get home faster, ” Ulmer said. “I understand for residents that this is kind of a pain.”
Vince Hunter, Foothills Composite principal, said he does hear concerns from residents about students parking.
“We encourage students to park in our lot,” Hunter said. “[Residents] being concerned about students parking in front of their homes, I understand that would be frustrating. We do try hard to be respectful of our neighbours, but it isn’t always easy with 1,200 kids.”
He said one of the issues is there is just one entrance and exit for students, staff and the public. Students may be opting to park off campus to avoid traffic at the end of the school day, he said. Hunter added parking stalls are usually available for students.
“We have made changes to the lot to make it flow, but with only one access it is always going to be an issue. We are bottled up at one-point for everybody, staff, students, the public,” Hunter said.
Hunter said the one entranceway is done due to buses having a different exit. The Comp is sort of a hub for students, where elementary and junior high students are dropped from one bus and picked up by another.
“We are worried with the amount of student traffic back there — especially the young ones — it is a safety issue,” Hunter said.
The change to the bylaw for the extension of permit parking for Cimarron Crescent is expected to be in front of council at one of its February meetings.
