"The sheriff's office from time to time will go through the Village and do a parking sweep, particularly for safety, loading and handicapped violations," City Manager Dave Anderson said. "More recently, they started to do some time zone violations."

But some objected, since during the holiday season, scaring people out of the Village with the threat of parking tickets does not seem prudent. Anderson consulted with the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce and the Saratoga Village Development Council and met with the sheriff's department. Parking enforcement was then suspended until the end of the year.

"The goal of parking enforcement with limited resources is to concentrate on safety," Anderson said. "Another of our goals has been to move merchants off the streets and into the parking lots so shoppers can find parking. We didn't want to start parking enforcement during the holiday season so we backed off on enforcement during the holidays.

"Starting in January, the sheriff's office will start doing sporadic parking enforcement in the Village, concentrating on the on-street parking in the Village parking zone. The bottom line is that if people are going to stay there for four to eight hours, they're going to need to park in the lots. We're giving people essentially a two-weeks' notice that we're going to enforce this."