The annual Downtown Lawrence Sidewalk Sale is set for Thursday, which means you should plan on temperatures being approximately equal to those on the surface of the sun, and you should start developing your parking strategy now. (Note: Driving down Massachusetts Street at 1 mile per hour while looking for a space is not a great strategy, but is an effective way to organize the annual Downtown Lawrence Parade of Horn Honkers.)

Soon, though, motorists may have to rethink their downtown parking strategy for every day of the year. As City Hall reporter Rochelle Valverde reported, City commissioners at their meeting this evening will receive a new parking study that will require big changes to parking downtown, if commissioners decide to follow the plan.

I know how much people like to talk about parking, so I decided to use the report to highlight five changes that may be in store for downtown parkers.

First, though, here’s one finding from the report to keep in mind: Downtown parking really isn’t that hard to find. “There is not currently a shortage of parking in the whole of downtown, however localized shortages do exist,” the report from the consulting firm Desman Design Management found. In other words, you can’t always park in front of the store you want to go to.

The report also found that, despite predictions to the contrary, the trend of new residential development in downtown isn’t creating major parking problems. “The impact of future downtown development on parking appears to be minimal over the next 10 years.”

What the report did find is that parking in downtown Lawrence is cheap, not particularly technology-friendly, and sometimes is managed in a way that doesn’t make a lot of sense. The report makes a lot of recommendations. Commissioners likely will approve the report at their meeting tonight, but that doesn’t mean the recommendations automatically will be implemented. Commissioners will have to give more approval — and in some cases, find money — before the changes can be made.

But if commissioners follow the plan, the changes will catch the attention of parkers. Here’s a look.

• Expect to pay more. The report recommends that the city double the fee required to park at a meter on Massachusetts Street. That would mean it would be a $1 per hour instead of the current 50 cents. The report also recommends doubling the fee to park at a 10-hour meter on the various side streets and long term lots. That would bring the rate to 20 cents per hour. The changes would generate about $400,000 more per year in parking revenue for the city. The fine for staying too long in a parking meter would increase to $10, up from $5 currently.

• Charge it. If we all had a dollar for every time we had to explain to a visitor how our dual-headed parking meter system works, we all could afford to pay our past-due parking tickets. The report isn’t a fan of the meters. For one, the dual-headed system is confusing for motorists to figure out which meter goes with which space, and they only accept coins. Coins to the young generation are what Werther’s Original are to my generation — only old people carry them in their pockets. The report recommends taking the parking meters down and replacing them with about 100 kiosks throughout downtown. The kiosks would allow you to enter your license plate number. You could pay with cash, coin or credit card, and they would be enabled to accept payment remotely through a smartphone. The system would cost about $900,000 to install, plus the city would need to spend about $60,000 to equip a couple of vehicles with license plate-reading technology. Instead of meter readers, city employees would drive by to see who has paid and who hasn’t. That would mean the city wouldn’t need as many meter readers, but the report already has an idea on that front.

• Pay later. Currently, you only have to feed the meter in downtown Lawrence from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. The report recommends that in most areas of downtown that be changed to 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays. (Sundays would still be free.) The city wouldn’t need to hire any new meter readers to implement the program because the license plate system means fewer meter readers are needed per shift.

• Where’s my car? If you have three or more unpaid parking tickets, the report suggests the city either tow your car or put a locking boot on it until you pay. The city is nowhere near that aggressive now. The most the city has done on that front was last year it raised the penalty for parking too long in a meter from $3 to $5. The report said that increase has done next to nothing to decrease the number of people parking illegally. In fact, the report said Lawrence issues an “extraordinarily high” number of parking citations. The city writes about 100,000 overtime parking violations a year. A city Lawrence’s size normally would have half to two-thirds that many tickets, according to the report. The boot and tow policy would be designed to make people think twice about not paying their parking tickets. Evidently lots of people have found it easy to ignore the city’s parking tickets. The report estimates “tens of thousands of parking citations” are currently outstanding. The report noted the city may need to have an amnesty program before the boot-and-tow policy begins — where people perhaps would only have to pay half their fines. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to find a parking space in downtown due to all the tow trucks.

• Change it up. There are several smaller changes that may catch the attention of motorists and others. They include: 1. Change about 100 two-hour meters to 10-hour meters. Those meters primarily are along portions of New Hampshire, Vermont, Eighth and Ninth streets. 2. Get rid of those 15- and 30-minute meters on Massachusetts Street and replace them with two-hour meters. Some merchants lobbied City Hall for the meters, saying customers need a spot to pop in and out of a store. But the report found the meters too difficult to enforce. 3. Downtown events often close off a street and the parking meters that go with them. The city currently charges $1 per space, regardless of how many days the event may last. The report recommends charging at least $5 per space, per day.

Commissioners meet at 6 p.m. tonight at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., to discuss the report.