City officials don’t want the streets of Lawrence becoming a storage site for little-used and abandoned cars.

That’s why they’re about to give final approval to an ordinance that will make it illegal to leave a vehicle parked on a public street more than 48 hours at a time.

“Our public streets are not designed for vehicle storage,” said Assistant City Manager Dave Corliss. “They’re designed for temporary parking, overnight parking of vehicles.”

He added: “On occasion, we find vehicle owners leave their vehicles on the street. They’re essentially storing them for a long period of time.”

The city has long had ordinances prohibiting long-term parking of cars and trucks on streets, but there was an enforcement problem. Any car owner who was in danger of getting a ticket — or getting the car towed — could simply drive the vehicle forward a couple of feet.

“They’ve moved it just a few inches,” Corliss said. “That’s not the intent of the ordinance.”

And that’s frustrating for Lawrence residents who don’t want to see their neighborhoods become long-term parking lots.

“I think that people are concerned about finding parking,” said Jerry Schultz, president of the Centennial Neighborhood Assn., which has been active on the issue.

“We’re close enough to the high school and the university where parking can be an issue,” he said. “I think people may be concerned, also, that sometimes these are not functional cars.”

Schultz added another concern: “It’s reflective of people not taking care of the neighborhood.”

Under the old ordinance, people have been penalized. The city issued 28 tickets in July, and 26 in June, to people who left their cars on the streets too long. The penalty was $30 per incident.

The Journal-World attempted to contact vehicle owners whose cars were ticketed in July and August. Of the dozen names made available by the city’s Municipal Court — officials still hadn’t figured out who owned every ticketed vehicle — the vast majority were onetime Kansas University students who appeared no longer to be living in Lawrence.

The new ordinance will force vehicle owners to move their cars across the street, or around the corner, to avoid penalties.

Schultz hopes the new rule results in changes for his neighborhood.

“Parking on the street should be more for people stopping by, things of that sort,” he said. “We have houses and we have driveways.”

The Lawrence City Commission is expected to approve the ordinance at its meeting at 6:35 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.