The Platteville Common Council spent, it seemed to those who sat through the meetings, most of 2012 making changes to downtown parking.

The council is now being asked to make two more changes to downtown parking, one of which appears to have a better chance of approval than the other.

Director of Public Works Howard Crofoot said downtown business owners have asked to have the two-hour parking areas extended to three hours, and to reduce the $20 fine for violating parking ordinances, because business customers were having to look for parking or risking the fine before they were done doing business downtown.

Crofoot said 40 downtown streets have parking restricted to two hours between 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

“Quite frankly, two-hour parking is a compromise,” said Crofoot. He said that extending parking time limits and reducing the fine would be likely to result in car owners parking in stalls that are supposed to be used by business customers.

At-large Ald. Mike Denn said it is a “good idea” to extend parking to three hours and that business owners were likely to tell their employees not to park in three-hour stalls.

No alderman, however, spoke in favor of reducing the fine.