Seeking to address a longstanding problem where those who work downtown take up free parking spaces meant to serve shoppers and diners, officials on Wednesday night approved new signage designed to help keep coveted spots on Main and Elm turning over.
The Police Commission unanimously approved the installation of two “no repeats within one hour” signs—in other words, an instruction to those who use the 90-minute spots in the “magic circle” that after their time is up, they cannot simply move to a new spot on the block.
It’s a rule that’s been on the books for years, though it’s been difficult to enforce and, according to Stacy Miltenberg, interim superintendent of the Parking Bureau, to convey to drivers.
“There has to be a way to get it out, and I do believe that signage is wonderful and education also is wonderful,” Miltenberg said during the meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department.
Currently, parking enforcement officers chalk the tires of cars parked in the 90-minute zones of Main and Elm, and may ticket those vehicles they come upon again on those streets after 90 minutes has expired.
Miltenberg said she is concerned about those who come into town in the morning—to grab breakfast with friends, say, then go work out and leave—and “come back in the afternoon with the kids because they have a dentist appointment and may want to go shopping.”
Their cars may bear the chalk mark from earlier in the day, risking a ticket.
Commission Chairman Stuart Sawabini asked whether it would be possible to use license plate readers for the same purpose. Miltenberg replied that the devices currently are being used to check permitted lots and that it would be difficult to patrol the 90-minute zones using the readers.
The only rule on the books now is in the Town Charter (section 58, paragraph 7), which says: “Wherever the use of a parking area shall be limited to a definite period, no vehicle which shall have been parked in any portion of that area for the time permitted shall be reparked in the same block within one hour thereafter.”
That rule was created back when the parking limit in the downtown was just one hour, and for the same reasons that discussions about these rules are resurfacing: Employees in the downtown had been taking up all the free spaces.
Parking Commission Chairman Keith Richey noted that the group now is working with the Chamber of Commerce on ways to get more off-street parking options for downtown employees—an effort that likely must wait for the Locust Avenue deck to be completed, in order to move municipal employees’ vehicles out of the Park Street lot.
As it is, many drivers who work in shops downtown “move their cars from Elm Street to Main Street and then back.”
“I would like those people to know that you cannot just keep moving your around there, because it’s so easy to park at the Morse court parking lot, Park Street, Locust—there’s plenty of municipal parking if you’re just willing to walk 50 feet,” Richey said.
Commissioner Sperry DeCew floated the idea of installing meters on the most coveted spots downtown, on Elm and Main Streets.