By DON STINE
Three-hour parking limits on commercial areas on Main Avenue over the summer months are being proposed by the Ocean Grove Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber officials made the proposal, which was also advanced a few years, ago, at the last Township Committee meeting.
Chamber Vice-President Valerie Green said there needs to be more movement among the cars in the commercial district over the summer.
“Now we get people that park and go to the beach, come back and change, and then go to dinner- and don’t move their car. And it’s a small business district to begin with. People park there and they stay there forever,” she said.
Ocean Grove’s business district is only a few blocks long, along and off of a area of Main Avenue. Green said many other towns in the area without parking meters do the same thing in their commercial districts.
The three-hour limit would be in effect on Main Avenue from New York to Central avenues, from 9 am to 6 pm daily. The parking limit would be in effect from May 15 to Sept. 15.
Green said that, probably in the 1980s, the commercial district used to have three-hour parking but it eventually was discontinued because it was not being enforced by the police department.
And Committeeman Nick Williams, who is also on the township’s police advisory committee, said enforcement is a problem as is the issue of where residents living above some of the stores will park.
“We met with the Chamber of Commerce about two years ago on this problem and the recurrent problem was how residents living there will handle the three-hour parking,” he said.
“And that concern will probably come up again during this conversation,” he said.
Mayor Carol Rizzo said the matter will be looked into by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, the Chamber of Commerce and the new Ocean Grove Better Parking Alliance.
