Parking problem demands a long-term solution

For Camas High School students and residents of neighborhoods surrounding the high school, parking seems to have been a problem almost since the facility opened in 2003. Each year, it has continued to grow and mutate into the ugly circumstances that exist today.

In 2005 and again in 2015, citizen complaints led the City Council to approve parking time restrictions, limiting on-street parking to two hours on school days in some of the neighborhoods adjacent to the high school. This unfortunately shifted the problem to the Waterleaf neighborhood, where residents on Aug. 1 described a situation where wall-to-wall parked cars create a “parking lot” on their streets. This is in addition to other issues ranging from littering and loitering to car accidents and verbal confrontations.