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Owners of some small businesses have complained they are paying an unfair share of downtown rented parking spaces, as required by the town.

Changes are in the offing. The Planning Board and the Town Council have discussed some of them, in the form of an amended zoning ordinance pertaining to village parking requirements.

A public hearing on the matter is scheduled for Sept. 3, at the Town Hall.

The ordinance requires shops to provide one customer parking space for every 150 square feet of retail floor space. Shopkeepers receive a 25 percent discount if the spaces are not designated specifically for their own shop, but instead are kept open for shared parking.

One employee space per 1,000 square feet also is required, which does not qualify for the discount.

Due to a quirk in the Comprehensive Plan, small-business owners are held to the same parking requirements as larger businesses. Because they have less foot traffic and do proportionally less sales volume than do the larger businesses, the parking requirements for them are greater.

Planning officials say small businesses are bearing an undue burden.

Earlier this year, Town Planner Donna Larson reported the results of a parking study, the task of which was to make the zoning ordinance more equitable. Moreover, the stated aim was to review parking requirements for small businesses not on Main Street, whose owners felt they should not have the same parking requirements as the larger stores on Main Street.

The town’s Traffic & Parking Committee completed a brief overview of the proposed ordinance changes, which includes a reduction of the number of spaces required if the business provides a public bathroom. Owners of small apartments also would get a break.

Gary Profenno, chairman of the Traffic & Parking Committee, said Thursday his committee is taking no part in any future financial agreement.

Profenno did, however, comment on the proposal.

“There’s lots of controversy here,” he said. “It will completely change the way they do shared parking. There could be serious implications for existing and new businesses. I am opposed to the way they are going about it, but it’s all going to come down to a public hearing.”

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