The College Station City Council met on Thursday, Oct. 23 to openly debate overnight street parking regulations in the Southside and Eastgate residential neighborhoods near Texas A&M’s campus.

The item was listed for discussion only, leaving the council and community members an open floor to discuss the potential impacts of new street parking ordinances and how the system would operate if these were ushered into use.

Assistant City Manager Jennifer Prochazka said the proposed regulations come in response to citizen complaints which cite traffic congestion on neighborhood streets as a safety concern for emergency vehicles, sanitation collection and residents.

The city council’s discussion built upon a public meeting held on Sept. 30 at College Station City Hall, where residents were offered a digital survey to submit feedback regarding the potential new ordinances.

Prochazka presented the item to the city council and revealed statistics gathered from the public survey. Of the 1,400 responses recorded, 4 out of 5 respondents opposed overnight parking removal. If removal was required, the most popular timeframe selected was 3 to 6 a.m.

Prochazka also said there were over 900 written comments submitted through the survey, most of which concerned insufficient parking availability outside homes, safety concerns for emergency vehicles and safety concerns regarding drunk driving when asking people to move their cars in the middle of the night.

Over half of the respondents wrote that their residences lacked sufficient parking availability, making street parking the norm for many neighborhoods.

Three citizens came forward to present their arguments to the council, including political science senior Ainsleigh Broadwell, vice president of municipal affairs for the Student Government Association, or SGA.

SGA recently partnered with Student Affairs to survey students about their parking experience, according to Broadwell. Three hundred and sixty responses were recorded across Bryan-College Station, with 70% reporting that parking access does not match their housing occupancy.

“Many four-bedroom homes only have three places in their driveway, forcing students to park in the street,” Broadwell said. “We recommend exploring zoning changes that encourage a 1-to-1 ratio of bedrooms to parking spots. This practice would ease street parking demand without penalizing the current residents. Regarding overnight restrictions, we support targeted limits where documented safety or access issues exist.”

Some arguments around parking have resulted from the passage of Senate Bill 1567, which eliminated previous limits on housing occupancy. With an influx of residents moving into single-family homes, there are more vehicles — and less parking space.

Councilman Bob Yancy challenged Broadwell on the consequences of SB 1567, referencing SGA’s previous statements on parking and occupancy.

“You guys told us and testified before the legislature that students wanted for public safety purposes, for trash cans left out purposes, for parking purposes, that you guys wanted the behaviors regulated,” Yancy said. “Now that we’re trying to regulate one of those behaviors, y’all have turned out in force and you don’t want us to.”

Broadwell addressed the overoccupancy argument in a statement to The Battalion, saying that many houses already struggle with adequate parking availability for the minimum number of occupants.

“So, in city code they actually do require a 1-to-1 ratio of one bedroom per parking spot, but in implementation that’s not the case and a lot of houses you cannot fit,” Broadwell said. “If it’s a four bedroom house, you can’t fit four cars in the driveway. So it is in code, but it’s not fully implemented.”

Councilman Mark Smith spoke in favor of overnight parking regulations and also cited overoccupancy as a key issue in the debate.

“One of the things that overoccupancy causes is parking that cannot happen on the site, and the city shouldn’t be obligated to provide a parking space on the street for the residents,” Smith said. “… I think that there is some feeling of entitlement that, ‘I live here I ought to be able to park in front,’ and that’s a city street, it’s not a private street … for public safety reasons we have been and should continue to remove parking where it’s a problem.”

Prochazka also addressed the overoccupancy topic.

“It is not a way to try to limit the number of people in the home,” Prochazka said. “It is a way to try to decongest the streets, and we see a lot of vehicles on the streets because we have a lot of people living in the neighborhood.”

Yancy brought his concerns to the table, highlighting the nuances of each component of the debate.

“I’m worried about the guy with the carpet cleaning van … where does he park?” Yancy asked. “I’m worried about the students that are following the rules … I think we need to be careful that we don’t use these policies as defacto ways to get at occupancy even though occupancy is what’s giving rise to the problem — overoccupancy, I should say.”

After hearing both sides of the conversation, Mayor John Nichols expressed that he was not ready for immediate action on the item.

“I just am not any longer ready to even pull the trigger,” Nichols said. “… I’m not sure I would try the overnight parking ban … if overoccupancy has changed from last year, I would agree with you. Right now, I don’t know that that’s the case. I would say, two or three years from now, who knows?”

Although the city council did not reach a conclusive decision on the street parking regulations, the item will be brought back for review during the council’s first meeting of the month on Nov. 13.