PARKING, LITTER STILL PROBLEM NEAR CENTRAL

Dan Rau is tired of the trash and the bumper-to-bumper parking problems created by high school students who have turned Luce and neighboring streets into their personal parking lot.

Rau, who lives in the 1700 block of Luce in the shadow of Cape Girardeau Central High School, couldn't get out of his driveway Friday morning. A student had parked in his driveway.

Some 500 students become drivers each year, but the high school parking lot can hold only 230 cars.

Mark Ruark, Cape Girardeau Central High School assistant principal, said there aren't enough parking spaces to handle all the students' cars. Many of the students end up parking along the streets bordering the school.

Parking is prohibited along the south side of Luce from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. But there are no parking restrictions on the north side of the street where Rau lives.

On Friday morning, Rau called police about the car in his driveway. The student's father arrived and moved the car.

Rau said the same car had been parked along the street on Thursday, partially blocking his driveway. Rau said his wife called police Thursday to report the problem.

On Friday, a police officer issued a ticket for illegally parking in the driveway.

Rau said Friday's parking problem wasn't an isolated incident but an example of the continuing parking problem faced each year by residents who live in the residential area between Sunset and Caruthers.

Rau faults the school district for not providing enough off-street parking for students.

Only juniors and seniors are allowed to buy parking permits to park on school grounds. That doesn't mean sophomores can't drive to school; they just can't park in school parking spaces, Ruark said.

Rau said the high school should consider buying a former lumber yard west of the school for parking or consider parking cars on the band and football practice field, if necessary.

Ruark said the high school doesn't want to turn its band and football practice field into a parking lot.

"We are really in a tough situation," said Ruark. "The only way to solve the parking problem is to come up with 300 more student parking places."

Ruark said the school district likely won't spend money on a new parking area when it plans to build a new high school, possibly in the next five years.

The new high school would be in a largely undeveloped area of the city where there would be plenty of room for parking. The old high school would the house seventh- and eighth-grade students. Ruark said those students won't be driving, so there shouldn't be a parking problem in the neighborhood.

But Rau said he and his neighbors shouldn't have to put up with the parking and litter problem.

"We get trash thrown on our yard. We get parking problems like this," Rau said after finding his car blocked in Friday.

Rau said one of his neighbors regularly picks up litter left by students.

He said the litter problem won't go away as long as the neighborhood serves as a school parking lot.

"We just don't need our neighborhood to be a parking lot," Rau said.

Ruark said he and a teacher walk around the campus before school, during the lunch hour and after school in an effort to keep parking problems to a minimum.

Ruark said he would encourage the neighbors to report any parking problems to high school officials. He said school officials can take disciplinary actions against students who violate the student code of conduct.

He said the student was wrong to have left the car in Rau's driveway. "There is no excuse for that," he said.

Rau said he has called school officials several times but seen little response.

Police Chief Rick Hetzel said his department tries to deal with the parking problem through summonses and warnings.

"Most of the time, they obey the rules," he said of students.

Sgt. J.R. Davis heads up the police department's traffic division. Davis said the department has a person assigned to deal with parking violations and abandoned vehicles in the city. "We try to monitor it very closely," he said.

Davis said parking violations can bring fines ranging from $10 to $15. Police will order a vehicle towed if it is blocking a driveway and the owner can't be found to move it, he said.

The City Council can adopt parking restrictions. But any on-street parking proposal first would have to be considered by the police department and city engineering office, Davis said.

The city has no plans to change parking on Luce and the surrounding streets, he said.

Rau said it appears neither the school nor the city want to address the problem. "The residents of the neighborhood are just stuck with it," he said.