Residents Urge Councilors to Consider Resident-Only Parking

City residents who are tired of getting slapped with tickets for parking in front of their homes are asking city councilors to start a resident sticker program, similar to Boston, which limits parking to specific neighborhoods.

The residents appeared in front of the Municipal Council Tuesday night to voice their complaints about parking.  They all live on or around Second Street, which is near a commuter rail station.

Right now, the city limits parking in that area to two hours, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and there is no parking allowed at night from December to March, due to snow emergencies.  The council is considering extending the parking to three hours, from 7 or 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., with unlimited parking in the afternoon. 

The change would allow residents to have visitors and family members park in front of their houses, but would prohibit commuters from parking there, they said.

However residents said they would still have to worry about tickets, which they did not think was fair.

“Let’s let people who live on the street be able to park on the street, rather than just a three or four hour period time,” said Terrianne Shea, who has lived on Second Street for 25 years.

“A lot of other communities have resident parking only stickers or resident
only signs,” she added.

Councilor Walter Thibodeau said, however, that the larger cities that have residential parking have a traffic court system in which to resolve conflicts.

"If we would go to another system, then we would have to appropriate the money to set up a whole traffic court kind of system, and that would entail all of the tickets that people challenge,” he said.

But Shea said that there are many smaller communities, such as Mansfield and Sharon that have residential parking.  She said she would research
parking enforcement in those areas, but Thibodeau said he would look into it.

Another resident in the neighborhood, Jillian Amaral, suggested that all city residents get stickers, allowing them to park anywhere in the city. She said she didn’t think city residents would bother to park in other people’s neighborhoods, and that the real problem was commuters from Rhode Island parking in front of their homes.

She said that extending parking to three hours would still penalize city residents.

“There has to be a better solution,” she said.

Lauren Richard, who also lives on Second Street, described the present system as “craziness.”  She said her parents have to park in front of her house in order to pick up her children, and they are ticketed if they forget to move their cars.

She also said the parking enforcer was rude to her father, who was trying to drop off her daughter.

“The enforcer said, ‘Hey, can’t you read the sign, you’re going to get a ticket; move it!’  Somehow, that doesn’t sound professional,” she said.

Councilor Peter Blais suggested the city combine residential stickers with a two-parking limitation for nonresidents to keep commuters from parking in the neighborhood.  He said that he too would be upset if he could not park in front of his house, and thought that might be a good solution.

Councilor President Frank Cook said more research has to be done before the council votes on the issue.  In the meantime, Councilor Mark Cooper will
act as a liaison between neighbors and the council.