Tamaqua Council fields parking complaints

Parking and traffic items continue to plague Tamaqua borough.

Council received correspondence from Syed Hussain, the owner of Mountain Tobacco. Hussain outlined difficulties that his business encountered due to the limited number of parking spaces along Mauch Chunk Street, especially due to increased traffic in the area.

Hussain requested the borough consider designating several parking spaces as customer parking only for his business. The request was denied. The borough has had similar requests before, but due to the limited number of parking spaces, cannot honor multiple requests.

The borough agreed to place a “No Parking Here to Corner” sign at 100 Orwigsburg St. This action is a follow-up to a request from a resident, as well as difficulties that the fire department has navigating emergency vehicles around the corner.

Councilman Brian Connely asked if the borough was going to consider the same action at more corners. “I can think of 50 where this is a problem,” he said. Frequently, residents will park all the way to the corner of a street due to the limited parking in the residential areas of the borough.

Councilman Micah Gursky said that this particular intersection is more vague than most, because it is not a 90-degree corner.

Connely requested that the parking and traffic committee evaluate all of the corners in the town for firetruck access and install signs and paint corners as needed.

Borough Manager Kevin Steigerwalt said that a similar survey had been done previously, and could be reviewed. It was also mentioned that some of the street signs and stop signs in the borough were also in need of upgrades and could be identified during the process.