Village residents and members of the downtown business community will have a chance to voice their opinions about suspension of the two-hour parking limit during the winter months at a public hearing Monday night.

Last month, village trustee Stu Taugher, who is also chairman of the police committee, again brought up the idea of doing away with the time limit in the business district while the area is on Eastern Standard Time from late October to April. The two-hour limit would be reinstated during the summer months when clocks are turned ahead for Daylight Savings Time.

"It seems ridiculous that you can come down here in January and there's two cars on the street and one guy's got a parking ticket," Taugher told the board.

The board is looking at changing the regulations for Main Street from Fair Street to Pine Boulevard and Pioneer Street from Church Street to Lake Street, according to village clerk Laura Lee.

During the winter months parking is not the problem it is in the summer when any space left unfilled is quickly claimed by the first motorist who encounters it. The board had discussed the possibility of doing away with the time limit a year ago, but dropped the suggestion.

In recent years, the board has suspended two-hour parking downtown for the holiday season and Mayor Wendell Tripp said he has never had any complaints about it.

Trustee Carol Waller said last month she was concerned about how the downtown merchants would react to the elimination of two-hour parking and wanted a chance to talk to some of them.

Glenn Hubbell, who was not on the board last year, works out of a Main Street office and said he believed the proposal would receive a mixed response from businesspeople.

Parking has been a long-standing problem and has plagued village officials for years. According to mayor Tripp, former mayor Harold Hollis said it all boils down to too many cars and too few spaces.

The old village parking committee disbanded when it realized there would never be a solution after trying for eight years to find one. The committee looked at a number of alternatives, including building a parking garage and switching to paid parking in the Doubleday Field lot.

The board took a straw vote last month to determine if there was support for Taugher's proposal with trustees Malone, Sanford, Taugher and Ed Tripp in favor and Waller and Hubbell against.

Elimination of the two-hour parking time limit will require a change to the local law which sets traffic regulations for the village.

The public hearing is set for Monday, Nov. 19, at 7:45 p.m.