POULSBO — When Mayor Kathryn Quade banged her gavel to open the Wednesday night public hearing on the city’s emergency downtown parking ordinance, the silence was deafening.

Despite years of complaints from local business owners, residents, visitors and even city officials themselves about the parking problems in downtown, no one stepped to the podium to address the issue.

However, that didn’t stop council members from re-airing their reasons behind the emergency ordinance or Councilman Ed Stern from remaining steadfast in his opposition.

“If our intent is to get people’s attention, I think hitting them with a two-by-four is a good way to do it,” Stern said after the majority of the council voted to keep the emergency ordinance in place.

Councilwoman Connie Lord, who was the originator of the ordinance, which requires any new commercial development or expansion of existing commercial property to provide either onsite or off-site parking in compliance with the city’s parking standards, said she still believes the ordinance is necessary.

“There are some issues that we need to get some clarity on,” Lord said.

The city has LID (Local Improvement District) 11, which built the King Olav parking lot and the LID, which paid for Anderson Parkway, so the issues pertaining to those districts need to be understood before any parking solution is proposed, she said.

“We have a lot of things we need to get a good grasp on before we turn it into a super plan,” Lord said.

The city cannot continue allowing development in downtown unless the parking issue is addressed, Councilman Dale Rudolph said.

Even though additional parking has been discussed as part of the city hall project, there are no guarantees, Rudolph said.

“How do we do it so the city doesn’t end up building parking without revenue?” he asked.

One possible solution to ease part of the parking burden might be making 3rd Avenue a one-way street with diagonal parking, Rudolph suggested.

“It seems to me the quickest fix we could come up with,” he said.

Although that option had been discussed in the past, it is time to revisit it and explore the possibilities, Rudolph said.

The council has seen and heard of numerous possible solutions to the downtown parking problem, but none have made it into the realm of reality, Councilman Jeff McGinty said.

“I don’t know what’s out there,” he said. “Maybe we should put all of them on the table and see who wants to pay for them.”

In the end, McGinty said the parking issue comes down to one thing: money.

That financial burden must be addressed by not only the city and the downtown merchants, but the downtown property owners, said Councilman Mike Regis.

“The property owner and merchant often aren’t the same person,” he said. “I want to ensure that the property owner is part of the discussion.”