Summer reprieve for parking problem

There's one good thing about the end of a school year: Any unsolved problems are put on ice for a couple of months.

This year, the end of the school year brings relief to residents of the Evanston subdivision, which has been clogged every day with Evans High School students parking along the streets.

"Kids, sometimes being inconsiderate, are parking in front of mailboxes and garbage cans where the trash man can't come by and the mailman can't deliver," Evans High Principal Don Brigdon says. "It's not that many of them are parking out there, but it's enough to aggravate these neighborhood folks."

The good news: Until classes resume Aug. 3, the neighborhood will have relative peace. And school and community officials now have 10 1/2 complaint-free weeks to come up with a long-needed solution.

Like many other things in a society that has grown far too dependent on government, the Evans High parking problem could best be solved with personal and parental responsibility: More students could ride the bus or carpool to school. And the thus-reduced number of students who continue to drive to school could properly park on campus.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely enough student drivers would adopt such a collective solution, and the school system can't force them to ride the bus. The school can take away students' on-campus parking privileges, but that doesn't stop them from driving -- it just pushes the problem out of school jurisdiction and into surrounding neighborhoods.

The next round of solutions will come from county officials, then, and likely will include a permit system that would allow only residents with proper decals to park in the affected neighborhood.

That may keep student drivers (along with legitimate visitors) out of Evanston this fall when school opens back up, but many of them will simply move their cars to some off-campus site.

For now, though, it's the only answer on the table. County officials, Evanston residents and school officials have a little more than two months to come up with something better.