Clintonville OKs ordinance
By Bert Lehman
There is a new winter weather emergency ordinance in the city of Clintonville that specifies parking restrictions in the city during a winter weather emergency.
The Clintonville Common Council approved the new ordinance at its Dec. 12 meeting. The council approved bypassing a first reading of the ordinance, so the ordinance is now in effect.
The ordinance was originally discussed by the council at its Nov. 14 meeting, but the council decided to take no action at that meeting due to concerns about restricting parking on Main Street during a winter weather emergency.
Nov. 14 meeting
The ordinance was originally discussed by the council during a Committee of the Whole meeting on Nov. 14. At that meeting, Justin Mc Auly, director of the Public Works and Parks & Recreation departments, told the council that the city had been working on a new ordinance for winter weather emergencies for about a year.
“The main goal behind this is to make the streets safer during snow removal,” Mc Auly said. “This is nothing that I created. There’s a lot of municipalities in the Midwest that utilize this. Quite a few in Wisconsin.”
He said area municipalities who have similar winter weather emergency ordinances as the one proposed included Manawa, Marion, and New London.
Part of the ordinance would change the start of winter parking from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1.
He said municipalities throughout the state of Wisconsin have different dates for the start of winter parking. He added that the reason for the proposed date change in Clintonville was due to Clintonville usually not receiving a significant amount of snow in November.
“But if we have snowfall, through this ordinance, we can declare a winter weather emergency and nobody can park on the streets anyways,” Mc Auly said.
The proposed ordinance would stipulate that a weather event of two or more inches of snow, sleet, freezing rain, or whenever traffic becomes impaired due to accumulation of snow due to wind, the public works director or deputy would have the authority to declare a winter weather emergency.
“At that point, nobody can park on the streets until it (weather emergency) is lifted,” Mc Auly said.
In addition to safety, the ordinance was designed to allow city crews to efficiently remove snow from city streets. This would help reduce the amount of overtime the city would have to pay for snow removal, Mc Auly said.
“People would have to utilize either parking lots that we have available in the city, they’d have to get everyone parked in their driveway,” Mc Auly said.
Mc Auly acknowledged that during a prior Clintonville Streets Committee meeting, there was discussion about making exceptions for parking on Main Street. He said he couldn’t find any other municipality that allowed business parking during winter weather emergencies.
“Typically, it’s no parking, period,” Mc Auly said.
Business parking concerns
Ald. Greg Rose said he was concerned about business parking on Main Street.
“We have some businesses that do not have their own parking lots and are pretty much 100% reliant on Main Street parking at some of their businesses,” Rose said. “The way this is written, my concern is if we have two or more inches of snow, which happens, fairly often, and we call a (winter weather) emergency, those businesses would have no parking available during business hours. That would leave people who are going to shop at those businesses to find a parking spot at some lot out of their way and walk.”
He also said many people who park on Main Street are not residents of Clintonville.
Ald. Brandon Braden agreed with Rose regarding parking on Main Street.
Mc Auly said the city did a trial run last year during a winter event. Even though the ordinance was not an official ordinance, the city declared a winter weather emergency. Mc Auly said they found compliance of more than 90%.
“People were notifying each other through texts, Facebook, letting each other know we can’t park on the streets, and people listened,” Mc Auly said.
Ordinance
The ordinance passed by the council prohibits winter parking for more than 30 minutes between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. from Dec. 1 to March 31. In the past winter parking started on Nov. 1.
The stipulation of a weather event being when at least 2 inches of snow was removed from the originally proposed ordinance.
According to the ordinance, a winter weather emergency is a “winter weather event whenever traffic becomes impaired due to the accumulation of snow, sleet, or freezing rain.”
The director of Public Works, or their designee, is responsible for declaring that a winter weather emergency is in effect.
While the ordinance that was originally proposed did not include an exception for Main Street parking, the ordinance that was passed by the council did allow for an exception for parking on Main Street.
The ordinance states, “Upon such declaration, no person shall park, stop or leave standing any vehicle on any street during the hours specified or until the Winter Weather Emergency has been lifted. The only exception is downtown parking from N. Main Street just south of 13th Street to S. Main Street just north of 5th Street.”
Vehicles found to be in violation of the ordinance may be ticketed by the Clintonville Police Department and/or be removed from the area so it doesn’t interfere with snow removal. Towing of vehicles will be at the vehicle owner’s risk. The vehicle owner will also be responsible to pay for towing and storage of the vehicle.