In February, the Brookings City Council amended Brookings Municipal Code Chapter 10 - Vehicles and Traffic limiting the storage of vehicles, including passenger vehicles, recreational vehicles (RV’s), travel trailers, and utility trailers on City streets for more than 72 hours.
Congestion on city streets and in condensed neighborhoods has been a growing concern to the council as the topic has come up for discussion at multiple workshops over the past several years. Over the course of several years, the city has received a variety of complaints from citizens regarding utility trailers and recreational vehicles (RVs) including motor homes travel trailers, and utility trailers parked on streets making it difficult in some instances to drive through these areas without going into the oncoming lane of traffic and also making visibility of oncoming traffic a challenge for vehicles pulling out of side streets and driveways. Public Works and Development Services Director, Anthony Baron, also noted the difficulty to perform street maintenance and the strain it puts on garbage and recycling service vehicles when many of our narrow right-of-way streets are being used for long-term storage of passenger vehicles, RVs, and utility trailers. “You can tell which ones they are as they usually have weeds growing through the pavements under them and you can see where the street sweeper has made a pass around it over a long period of time,” Baron says.
Starting September 1, 2022 the new parking regulations will go into effect. The City Council postponed the effective date in order to give effected residents time (over six months) to find alternative storage arrangements.