Washington’s City Council, during its meeting Monday, rejected a proposal to prohibit parking from Telfair Street to 140 feet westward along the south side of East 10^th Street.

Councilmen Richard Brooks and Larry Beeman voted for Brooks’ motion to implement the parking ban, but council members Doug Mercer, Virginia Finnerty and William Pitt voted against the motion.

The council’s action came after 10^th Street resident Mickey Cochran requested a parking ban. He originally asked the city to consider prohibiting parking on the south side of the street from Nicholson and Telfair streets, possibly to McNair Street.

Cochran renewed his request Monday. He had spoken to the council about his request two previous times and during an informal meeting involving some of his neighbors and city officials last week. Some of those neighbors expressed opposition to his request, saying the parking ban could inconvenience them.

During the council’s March 14 meeting, Cochran told the council about a neighbor who operated a business from their home in a residential area, one that left abandoned cars in their backyard. Cochran also said that neighbor, in retaliation for his complaints to city officials, purposely parked vehicles in front of his house so he and Cochran’s visitors could not park there. Cochran said he wants the city to take action to help him protect his property rights.

“My family has resided at this address for 69 years and has never seen anything like this happen. For the last eight years, I had the misfortune of living beside a junkyard, used-car lot and a rundown house that was abandoned for three-plus years,” Cochran said at the March 14 meeting.

Cochran said his complaints to city officials, including the code-enforcement officer, have yielded some results. “Finally, the gentleman has begun to clean up his backyard where the business was conducted. At one time, there were five vacant cars sitting there for over a year. No one should have to live in that kind of environment,” he said last month.

At the council’s March 28 meeting, the informal April 7 meeting and the council’s meeting earlier this week, some of Cochran’s neighbors said his request to ban parking on the south side of 10^th Street for several blocks was taking things to far, with some of them saying perhaps the parking ban could apply to just the area in front of Cochran’s house instead of a larger section of the street.