Dozens of protesters rallied outside Smiths Fall's town hall over a change to angled parking.
Residents are raising their voices after the current council voted to reverse a design for the redevelopment for Beckwith Street. The former council rejected a plan that would see the downtown angled parking changed to parallel, but the new council rescinded that decision in January.
"How many parking spots are we going to lose when we switch over to parallel?" said upset resident Karen Salter.
"How come there was no public input, no consultation about this?"
Salter is one of dozens who have been protesting outside the town hall for seven weeks.
Justin Duhamel says the issue is about more than just a parking spot, but accessibility and safety.
"It's a declining street," said Duhamel.
"On one side you have bikes zooming past, the other side is traffic, this is a major highway with transport trucks so we have major safety concerns."
Duhamel says council did not consult the public before deciding to overturn the decision.
"Smiths Falls people are passionate here,"
"We're going to keep up the pressure on them, this is about democracy."
The Mayor of Smith Falls says council reviewed feedback collected over a period of two weeks.
"I had over 150 emails from people weighing in," said Mayor Shawn Pankow.
"We're doing what we can to improve the downtown."
Pankow says he hears the concerns of residents, but with new faces sitting on council, they decided to take a second look at the plans.
"It was very car-focused and had limited accessibility improvements, not much better than we have today," said Pankow, adding the new plan will be an improvement to the downtown.
"Every space is accessible and barrier free to to sidewalk, we're going to have large designated spaces to each spot."
Pankow says both the former and new plan would have reduced the parking space capacity by 10 spaces. The hope is to have the design done by 2021.
