At the beginning of September, the Village of Walden board received requests from a few local businesses to implement a paid parking system on the village streets, stating that the system would promote customer parking and discourage tenant parking. After Mayor John Ramos and Deputy Mayor Chris Batson conducted their own research, they discovered that parking meters may not be answer.

During the board’s September 17 meeting, Batson announced that he and Ramos recently spoke with 11 local business owners, asking each of them for their opinion on a paid parking system. All 11 owners responded with the same answer: they felt that paid parking in Walden was unnecessary and tenant parking on village streets did not harm their businesses.

“All 11 were in overwhelming favor of sticking to what we have now, none of them felt that the parking was an issue,” Batson said. “There was no one in favor of parking meters nor did any of the businesses that we spoke to feel the street parking slowed down or inhibited their business.”

Batson also shared two suggestions that he received from these businesses: first, the board should distribute parking passes to some local employees, granting them immunity from the village’s timed parking system while they work. Second, the board should look into improving the municipal parking signage so that passersby can more easily identify parking in the village. The business owners speculated that visitors do not find the current street parking appealing to use.

“Would it be possible to issue a small amount of employee parking passes to make those particular folks exempt from being ticketed? I think it’s a fair discussion to have at some point,” Batson said. “We may also want to consider looking at the size and location of signs for the municipal lots. A lot of the parking discussion focused on the fact that the local businesses felt the street parking was not the best for capturing passersby, either due to looking too complicated or being unavailable at that moment.”

Before ending the discussion, Batson requested that the board table these ideas for a future discussion and create a plan for the municipal parking signage.