ZELIENOPLE — Residents soon may see a big change in on-street parking.

Borough council voted Monday night to advertise a new ordinance eliminating parking meters in lieu of free two-hour parking on some streets.

Police Chief Jim Miller said he met with more than 35 business owners and said the two-hour parking was the popular choice.

“If it doesn’t work, we can always amend the ordinance at a later date,” Miller said. “We have to start somewhere.”

Streets to have two-hour parking include Main Street, New Castle Street and Spring Street.

Parking would be enforced from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Sundays and holidays will be unaffected with the new ordinance.

No parking will be allowed from 3 to 5 a.m.

The ordinance originally only called for enforcement Mondays through Fridays. However council members and residents suggested extending it to Saturdays.

“This past Saturday, Main Street was just full,” council President Allen Bayer said.

Lifelong resident Henry Ziegler said parking has been a bane to businesses.

“They would park in there for four hours or five hours,” said Ziegler, who owns The Newsstand on Main Street. “People would have no place to park.”

Matthew Edwards, acting vice president of the Zelienople Business Association and the owner of Farmers Insurance on Main Street, said the change will be beneficial.

Miller also spoke with the business association to gather its input.

Edwards said, “I had a couple of clients who may have ran into getting a ticket while in my office. There were a couple of different occasions where I was picking up the costs for a parking ticket for a client because of the current situation.”

Some exception areas to the new parking rules include:

n Two spaces at the post office, which will limit parking to 15 minutes.

n Unrestricted parking for spaces on Spring Street east of the Harper Building.

n Unrestricted parking for spaces on West Spring Street, west of the Spring Street parking lot exit.

n Two parking spaces on the south side of West New Castle Street near the intersection with Main Street will be a no-parking zone.

Under the new ordinance, two-hour parking restrictions on Clay and High Streets are abolished.

Street-metered parking in the Grandview and Spring Street municipal parking lots also is abolished.

Parking regulations may be adjusted for parades, festivals and community events.

Residents also can park in the municipal parking lot between Grandview Avenue and Main Street metered by an electronic kiosk.

The 111-space municipal parking lot planned for Spring Street between Main and South Clay Streets will be kiosk-controlled.

Parking permits may be issued to business owners.

Miller and council members said the ordinance could be voted on as soon as April.

“We’ve been kicking this can for quite a bit,” Bayer said. “We’ll decide if we need to amend it over a period of a couple of months.”