Y. students losing street parking

PROVO — Provo bills itself as a family-friendly city that doubles as the home of an estimated 35,000 college students.

The sometimes natural tension between the two communities is most evident on the outskirts of Brigham Young University, where off-campus apartments and condos bump up against family neighborhoods.

It's there that elderly couples or parents with young children regularly call Provo police to complain about late and loud parties, speeding vehicles and streets lined with parked cars.

And it's in these neighborhoods that the Provo City Council is beginning to restrict parking on city streets, banning students and everyone else except people living in homes in the area.

The council voted unanimously late Tuesday night to create parking permit programs near Seven Peaks Water Park. Only residents of homes in the area will be eligible to obtain permits to park on the streets in the Foothill Park and University Gardens areas north of the water park. The permit programs begin Jan. 1 and:

• Ban all overnight parking in the Foothill Park area. Only residents of homes will be given permits to park on the streets during the day, between 5:30 a.m. and 12:30 a.m.

• Ban all daytime parking in the University Gardens/North Foothill. Residents with permits will be able to park overnight between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Provo Mayor Lewis Billings and the seven City Council members repeatedly said they sympathize with the students and other college-age tenants who live in the apartments and condos at the Belmont, Arlington, Arlington Heights, Highland Park and King Henry complexes.

They also stressed that they value BYU and its contribution to the city, but Councilwoman Cynthia Dayton said "we also have to respect the needs of the other residents. We need to allow them to have a family experience in a family neighborhood."

The parking permit programs are the council's last-ditch attempt to force landlords to stop overcrowding their apartments and condos. Many landlords are renting to an illegal number of tenants, who park their additional cars in nearby family neighborhoods.

"If the students find out they won't have a place to park, they'll be less likely to live in a place that illegally houses too many occupants," council chairman George Stewart said.

More than 100 students and other tenants in the condo and apartment complexes attended Tuesday night's meeting. Many said they shouldn't be the ones punished for bad behavior by landlords. They also wondered where they will park from January to September, when their leases run out.

The council and a local attorney said students have a legal way out of their leases if their landlords don't provide enough parking for them in their complexes.