Business owners reminded to ‘park up the hill’

The City of Prescott is moving full-steam ahead on developing a tiered parking lot downtown, between the Holiday gas station and Dakota Street.

With the addition of 50-60 parking spaces, it will help the downtown parking crunch, but council members also want to get the word out to business owners and their employees that they shouldn’t be taking prime Broad Street parking.

In the future, the new lot could have pay stations added. A lot of the weekend problems are caused by people parking for free and walking to the beach at Point Park, where Washington County, Minn. has set up pay stations for parking.

“We’re in dire need of parking. This is a really good opportunity to do that,” said Alderperson Rob Daugherty. “The city crew can do pretty much most of the work. They can excavate it. They can put the retaining wall in. We can have it blacktopped.”

“I like the idea of putting in one of those parking cashless machines,” said Alderperson Maureen Otwell. “We noticed last year people were parking for free here and walking to Point Beach because they have one of those machines in their parking lot.”

“We have to get something done,” said Mayor David Hovel. “We should at least get parking in. If we start to have problems, we can get meters in.”

Alderperson Thomas Oss agreed that enforcement measures can come down the road.

“Let’s get the parking spots in here and sneak up with more regulatory efforts. Get some relief, get some parking spots down there this summer and then address the issues that come up,” Oss said.

One of those problems now is some business owners and their employees are taking up prime spaces that should be left for customers.

“We just kind of need to remind the business owners, you yourself and your employees need to park off the main street,” said City Administrator Jayne Brand. “Get up in the Orange Street parking lot.”

“This is incredibly important,” Alderperson Dar Hintz said.

Enforcement of parking limits is a problem, Police Chief Eric Michaels said. Officers can’t use chalk on tires and then circle back after a period of time.

“The Supreme Court ruled that’s a breach of the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “Basically, if you put up a 15-minute parking sign down there, there’s no way we can cite them.”

That is, unless an officer sits and watches the spot the entire time and witnesses the parking infraction.

Hovel volunteered to sign a letter to be sent to downtown businesses “to remind them and their employees to park up the hill.”

Funds for the new parking lot will come from the city’s Tax Incremental District financing.

Slow down!

The city will move ahead with putting flashing yellow lights on speed limit signs in an effort to slow traffic on highways 10 and 35.

The city has requested speed limit reductions many times, most notably on Highway 10, but the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is not willing to look at that at this time; they suggested some measures the city could take to slow traffic.

Brand said the yellow lights cost just $130 each and are solar-powered. Public works employees will install them.

“The gist of it is the Wisconsin DOT said that if you want us to work with you on speed limits, you take the first step,” said Brand.

Michaels said the flashing yellow lights do help slow traffic down.

“When the guys put that flashing light at Freedom Park, you can see that from the south of town up Highway 35. Most generally, you can see the brake lights come on as soon as they see the flashing yellow,” he said.

The lights will be put in several places.

“We’ll start with a few and go from there,” said Brand. “This is inexpensive for us to look at.”

It will be quite a few years before the DOT will consider speed limit changes on the state highways through Prescott.

“They’re not open to do a speed reassessment,” she said. “2028 was the first time they were going to look at anything in this general area.”

Prescott Daze

The council’s Health and Safety Committee will meet with the Prescott Daze Committee May 13 at 6 p.m. over how this year’s festival will be run. Changes are necessary because of city insurance coverage. The committee itself needs to be an official city committee, with noticed meetings and minutes taken, and events with alcohol during Prescott Daze need to be overseen by another non-profit entity.

T he changes were brought up last year but were a moot point because the pandemic forced cancellation of the event, held the weekend after Labor Day.

Brand said the group is also awaiting guidance from Pierce County Public Health on how the festival can operate this year.

Photos by John McLoone