NATCHEZ &8212; If you park more than two hours in downtown&8217;s two-hour zones and haven&8217;t received a ticket, be prepared to pay your $3 in the future.

Police Chief Mike Mullins has assigned the purchasing officer to also work part-time enforcing the two-hour parking limit downtown.

The change was made in large part due to complaints about employees parking in front of businesses for extended hours, leaving customers few parking options.

The department has had a parking enforcement officer before, but the position was eliminated in recent years due to budget cuts.

Feelings among downtown business owners and employees about the new enforcement were mixed.

&8220;I hope they do (enforce it), because people who work on Main and Franklin streets need to park off the street so customers will have a place to park,&8221; said Robert Mims, owner of Mims Jewelers.

Mims said another solution might be for downtown businesses to form a committee of people who would take down the tag numbers of repeat offenders and then visit them to ask them to stop.

Still, Mims said he&8217;s skeptical that enforcement will be done long term or that a more permanent solution to the downtown parking problem will be found.

&8220;We (downtown business owners) have fought this for 30 years,&8221; Mims said. &8220;The city puts someone on enforcement for two months and then says they don&8217;t have the funds to continue it.&8221;

But Janice Gibson, an employee at Daniels Basketry, said without the spaces in front of the stores, employees have difficulty finding convenient places to park.

&8220;I would ask them, &8216;Where do we park?&8217; Britton & Koontz Bank bought the parking across from (St. Mary) church,&8221; Gibson said.

&8220;And if we park all the way down near the convention center, how do we get to work on time?&8221;

Tammi Gardner, executive director of Natchez Downtown Development Association, said a lack of convenient parking is a problem with which most small to mid-sized cities struggle.

But the opening of several more downtown businesses has created even more of a parking crunch, since the Commerce Street spaces that were once used as overflow parking for Main and Franklin are now filled.

However, the parking crunch has been a problem for several years, Gardner noted.

To help address parking, Gardner added, she and then-Police Chief Willie Huff identified zones &8212; such as the one near the convention center &8212; where people could park with no time limit.

&8220;But I don&8217;t know that those are (fully) being used,&8221; she said.

For enforcement to be most effective, the city has to write tickets consistently, and it would help if the fine for such a ticket were more than $3, Gardner said.

&8220;I&8217;ve had downtown business owners tell me it&8217;s worth $3 a day just to have a place to park,&8221; she said.

Downtown associations in other towns deal with the problem, in some cases, by pooling donations from business owners to buy their own parking lot, she said.

Alderwoman Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis, whose Ward 1 includes downtown, said possible solutions still being batted around by the city include using one lane on Franklin from Broadway to Canal as overflow parking.

But she&8217;s warming to Gardner&8217;s idea about downtown business owners footing the bill for a more permanent solution.

&8220;We were hoping someone in the private sector would develop a parking garage,&8221; Arceneaux-Mathis said.