Clarksville, Tennessee, moves to dissolve Parking Commission, shift enforcement to police

The Clarksville City Council is preparing to take a sledgehammer to the city’s current parking setup.

Council members will begin discussing a proposed overhaul of the city’s Parking Ordinance during a non-voting executive session on Thursday afternoon. The proposal would eliminate the Clarksville Parking Commission and transfer parking enforcement to the Clarksville Police Department.

Ward 11 Councilman Joe Shakeenab is sponsoring the ordinance changes, which city officials say are aimed at tightening enforcement and untangling years of operational headaches tied to downtown parking.

The proposal would also shift unpaid parking violations from the Parking Commission to City Court, where they would be reviewed rather than by the Parking Commission, which has handled disputes and rate decisions since 2014.

City leaders are framing the change as a practical reset after years of trying to make parking operate like a self-sustaining business. That approach — using an enterprise fund model — put pressure on parking operations to pay for themselves while also managing enforcement, rates, complaints, and downtown growth.

That balancing act got harder as Clarksville’s downtown changed. More events, more visitors, more private parking operators, and more traffic turned what was once a fairly narrow downtown issue into a broader city management problem.

The proposed ordinance shifts the city’s focus away from parking as a standalone revenue operation and more toward traffic management and public safety. Putting enforcement under the police department would give the city a more direct enforcement structure and likely more consistent ticketing and compliance.

It would also centralize authority within a department already handling citywide traffic enforcement, rather than relying on a separate commission structure that officials say struggled to keep up with competing demands.
The proposal follows a trend seen in other Tennessee cities that have folded parking oversight into general municipal operations instead of running it as a semi-independent system.

The Council’s executive session begins at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.