Winter parking ban should be changed, say frustrated Watertown residents
WATERTOWN - Residents in one Massachusetts community are calling on the town to consider making changes to its winter parking ban, saying finding parking in the city has become an inconvenience.
Parking ban an "inconvenience"
When Jean Dunoyer moved onto Adams Avenue 25 years ago, he said the construction site across the street from his house was filled with willow trees and flowers. Last year, that garden was destroyed, and it's now a hole filled with gravel.
"What's going to happen to this hole is that it's going to become black tar pavement for six cars," Dunoyer said.
According to the Watertown resident, a parking lot is being made for residents to use when the town's winter parking ban goes into effect Dec. 2.
"I look at that with a lot of despair because I feel like we have all of this pavement here and the town's telling us that we can't use it," he said.
From November to April, the Watertown Police Department bans late night street parking from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. Some residents told WBZ-TV it's a major inconvenience.
Kevin Sanderson, a firefighter in Massachusetts said, "I'm in full support of it for my job. Because when the streets get packed up with a bunch of cars, it makes it next to impossible to get fire trucks and other vehicles down the roads."
The city bans cars parked overnight to make room for emergency vehicles and snow plowing. "But to have it for four or five months of the year when there's hardly any snow, that doesn't make any sense," said Dunoyer's wife, Gretchen Dunoyer.
Gretchen Dunoyer is also against the parking ban and while she believes that temporary bans may be the answer when there are snowstorms, her husband said, "Obviously, the answer is only allow parking on one side of the street."
800 sign petition
The Dunoyers have off-street parking at their house, but for people who don't have access to driveways and garages, the city's created a list of temporary municipal parking lots at places like the public library, the police station on Main Street and public-school parking lots.
Eight hundred residents of Watertown have hand-signed a petition asking the City Council to conduct a hearing to consider changes to the winter parking ban that's been in place for years.
"Under the rules of the city charter, the council will need to hold that hearing within three months," said George Proakis, Watertown's City Manager.
"When that happens, we need every citizen in this town that is available, that's not traveling and has time, to come to this meeting," said Jean Dunoyer.