Residents living in a tourist town have it tough when it comes to finding parking near their homes.

The task may become easier in the future in Jim Thorpe as the borough's planning commission begins discussions on permit parking in certain areas."There is no parking on my end of town," said West Broadway resident Danny McGinley at Thursday's council meeting."Tourists come in and park from Friday night to Monday. It's really not fair to the people who live up there."Councilman Curtis Jackson said he would like to see a system similar to West Chester, where he grew up."That's a college town and it has the same issues," Jackson said. "What they did is on some streets for a set amount of hours, only people with permits could park there."The permits were given to homeowners there and they also had visitor tags they could give to people coming to see them."The permit-only hours would likely kick in at night so that residents had ample opportunity for overnight parking in front of their homes."In February, the planning commission is going to begin looking at it, but the idea was it would be from the Mauch Chunk Opera House on up," Jackson said.Council President Greg Strubinger said if an ordinance were adopted in the future, the fine for parking in those areas without a permit would have to be significant enough to give it some teeth.Other than permit parking, one of the things that may help solve the problem is a parking garage in downtown Jim Thorpe, something that has been advocated for by Councilman Jay Miller."The first thing we would have to do is create a parking authority that could acquire property and put a parking building up," he said. "Then we would have people on a parking commission that would take care of the parking in this town."If the permit idea takes off, it may be enacted in more areas than just West Broadway."The Heights has a similar problem," Mayor Michael Sofranko said. "When you drive the tourists out of one area, they're going to go to another and we've already seen issues up there."