The Free Parking Program that was instituted during the summer of 2011 has been suspended.
What was meant to attract more shoppers to the downtown Mansfield area and increase traffic to local businesses reportedly caused complaints among visitors because they could no longer find parking due to cars parked at the meters all day long.
Furthermore, people were still putting money into the meters on Fridays, which suggested that local business employees were taking advantage of the system and neglecting the program’s two-hour parking limit.
Safety Service Director, Lori Cope, explained, “We wanted to investigate the complaints we had been receiving and believed it to be in the merchants’ best interest to suspend the program.”
Mayor Tim Theaker made the final decision for the suspension which went into effect on July 12.
Cope added, “We are definitely going to try to revisit the program in the future and maybe determine a better program to use.”
“So far we haven’t had any complaints from shoppers about discontinuing the free Friday parking. [The suspension] is allowing visitors the opportunity to park, since business employees aren’t taking up the parking spaces. One of the main things we want to do is to benefit the local merchants, and this definitely seems to have been a positive move,” said Cope.