Asheboro to educate about legal parking, then enforce with tickets

ASHEBORO — The Asheboro City Council gave the green light on short-term goals to try and improve parking around downtown.

City staff said ramping up enforcement of violations will be one of those strategies, but only after they hold a public information campaign.

At the Aug. 7 council meeting, Assistant City Manager Trevor Nuttall laid out four areas of improvement they believe they can finish by the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year:

■ Educational campaign about regulations for downtown merchants, shoppers and the public.

■ New public parking signage and updated pavement markings.

■ Amended ordinances for delivery zone operations to improve parking availability.

■ Pedestrian safety enhancements.

The city hired Walker Consultants to analyze the current parking conditions of approximately 15 city blocks. The firm presented its recommendations to improve parking availability and safety at the July meeting.

Nuttall said enforcement has been lax. He noted that some years, the city gave out 200 tickets, but that number dwindled recently to a few dozen a year. 

“I’ve heard some suggestions this is intended to be a revenue generator, which is why we’re interested in enforcing. That is not the case,” he said. “It will not generate revenue for the city. The truth is, if we’re effective, we won’t write many tickets. That’s what we’re all looking for.”

Parking violations will stay at $5, but the law allows police to use a uniform citation for repeat offenders with additional costs.

The educational campaign, Nuttall said, would span across social media, online messaging, advertisements, listservs and face-to-face interactions.

Council member Clark Bell said he thinks the citation should cost more, saying the low fine does not deter repeat offenders. 

“I think with a very aggressive education process, we’ll get to those folks who are, right now, staying over a little bit too long,” he said. 

“I think that a $5 ticket is not going to be sufficient to minimize those who are abusing that timeframe.”

Mayor David Smith said, “I’m not suggesting we make it punitive, but sooner or later, after a strong education plan, we’ll have to look at something that gets some attention.”

During this time, city staff hope to improve safety for pedestrians by adding more signal controls and illuminated crosswalk signs. 

The study found that some public parking spaces go underused because of the distance from the most popular destinations. 

“When we did surveying as part of this study,” Nuttall said, “there was a perception that the parking locations and availability of where those parking resources are can feel unsafe, because of the volume of traffic navigating through downtown.”

The city council gave its consensus for staff to begin making changes. 

Nuttall said they want to make other improvements, including:

■ Adding new enforcement technologies such as license plate readers, replacing or redesigning wayfinding signs.

■ Talking to private property owners about allowing the public to use their lots outside normal business hours.

Those efforts, he said, will take longer than this fiscal year.

These changes closely follow the recommendations by Walker Consultants, which began its analysis in late 2024. It found more than 920 off-street parking spaces and more than 320 curbside parking spaces. 

Combined with private parking, the downtown area has nearly 2,500 spaces. 

Parking downtown is primarily used for business and entertainment, not residential.