BANDON — Grumbly neighbors weren’t persuasive enough to convince Bandon’s city councilors to ban semi-truck parking in city limits.

The City Council decided on a 4-2 vote Monday not to prohibit truck drivers from parking their semis in residential neighborhoods.

According to the city’s attorney, Fred Carleton, city code defines truck routes and restricts truck travel for vehicles weighing more than 8,000 pounds. The code allows unloaded trucks without trailers to travel to and from an operator’s home, as long as the driver doesn’t leave the motor idling for more than five minutes after arriving or before leaving.

Councilor Mike Claassen first brought up the issue at an October council meeting, after a resident who lives close to a truck driver complained about the noise and fumes. Other residents also have complained at the weekly Coffee With a Councilor sessions on Saturday mornings, Claassen said.

One woman told him it takes her “two minutes to get a headache (from diesel fumes), and two hours for it to go away,” Claassen said.

Last month, the council had discussed asking truck owners to park their vehicles in the lot next to the city shop, behind where the former cheese factory once stood. That didn’t settle well.

One trucker e-mailed Mayor Mary Schamehorn, saying he was concerned about vandalism if he has to park his rig away from his home. He mentioned an incident a couple of years ago when a truck parked at Ray’s Food Place overnight was vandalized, which made the log load it was carrying dangerous to transport.

“I’m personally not in favor of this,” Schamehorn said.

Councilor Brian Vick said he has sadly seen Bandon change from a logging, fishing and farming community in the 30 years he’s lived here, and that the truckers who remain are simply trying to make a living.

“I can’t believe this can’t be solved by neighbors talking to neighbors,” Vick said. “We don’t need an ordinance to deal with it.”

Claassen proposed the motion to ban in-city truck parking, and he and Nancy Drew voted in favor. Vick, Geri Procetto, Blythe Tiffany and Claudine Hundhausen voted against the motion.

One resident was visibly upset after the vote.

“I don’t know if you have many truckers in the town, but you do have a lot of residents,” Brenda Shurtz told the council. “You have more residents than you do truckers and you are being very narrow-minded, all of you, when you say that those truckers are above the rest of your residents.”

(Amy Moss Strong is editor of the Bandon Western World.)