Commission Votes 3-2 To Recommend Metered Parking on Main and Elm

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Saying it didn’t make sense for downtown New Canaan’s best parking spaces to be free, town officials this month voted to recommend installing meters on Main and Elm Streets. The Parking Commission as part of its 3-2 vote at the May 2 meeting also is recommending that the spaces running along the northern edge of Morse Court, which now offer free 15-minute parking, also be metered. “By giving away free parking on the main streets, we create a perverse incentive for people to not use parking in the peripheral lots that are designed to take the load off [Elm and Main Streets],” Commissioner Chris Hering said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. Hering voted in favor of the change, along with Commissioners Stuart Stringfellow and Peter Ogilvie (who long advocacy for this idea was recorded in a recent 0684-Radi0 podcast). Chairman Keith Richey and Commissioner Pam Crum voted against the recommendation.

Chris Hering

‘We Are Being Reasonable’: Facing Rebuke from Commission Chairman, Parking Manager Defends Enforcement 

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During a tense meeting last week that included menacing language from an appointed official, the head of New Canaan’s Parking Bureau defended the town’s enforcement officers against accusations that they’re aggressive and sneaky about issuing tickets. 

Not only do enforcement officers ask motorists to move prior to ticketing them, but many tickets are voided by the Parking Bureau before they ever come before the appointed body that oversees the town department, Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg said Thursday night. “We give leniency,” Miltenberg said during the Parking Commission’s regular meeting, held in Town Hall. 

“If somebody is sitting in the car and in a no parking zone, we ask them to move. Let me tell you what the staff and I am encountering by these people out on they street: They don’t want to move. Excuse me for being like this, but we are taking such crap from these people that you don’t see the other side and I have to defend the department. We are not out there—we’re short-staffed to begin with and we are not out there watching people and sneaking up on people.

Chris Hering

Town Upholds New Canaan Woman’s $25 Parking Ticket

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The Parking Commission at its most recent meeting voted 4-1 to uphold a $25 ticket for a New Canaan woman who had overstayed in a Main Street space for about a half-hour. 

Heidi McEvoy told members of the Commission during an appeal hearing that she’s a longtime volunteer at New Canaan Library and that on the Monday morning in question, she headed in to assist with a twice-yearly children’s book sale and “the library lot was full.”

“In fact, it was so full that there were cars parked in areas marked ‘no parking’—and that’s quite a common occurrence,” McEvoy said during her appeal hearing, held March 14 at Town Hall. 

“A lot of people use the library lot to stay and do their library shopping in town and they never move. And the library does not do much about enforcing that. But in any event, when I first arrived, there were no spaces in the library parking lot, so I went around the lot three or four times and still couldn’t find one, and parked on Main Street and then later on after I had finished my stint at the library I came out and saw the parking meter lady putting a ticket on my car and I said, ‘But I am here.’ She said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do anything about it— I have already written the ticket.’ And my defense is that I have put in a lot of time in at New Canaan Library and made lot of money for the library at the book sales and if not there isn’t parking in the library parking lot, which I can’t control and they don’t enforce it, I don’t think the library volunteers should be charged for parking tickets. Now if you look at my record, I think I have had one parking ticket in all of my 50 years that I have lived in New Canaan. And I am quite responsible.

Government

Town Upholds $150 Ticket for New Canaan Woman Who Parked in Disabled Space

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The Parking Commission voted 4-0 at its most recent meeting to uphold a $150 ticket issued to a New Canaan woman who had parked in a disabled space on Elm Street. 

Sandra Rama told members of the Commission during their March 14 meeting that she had a “handicapped parking sticker up until November” following a hip replacement one year ago, “so I am very aware of not parking in a handicapped spot.”

Yet at about 3:46 p.m. on Jan. 8, she received a ticket for parking in the disabled space at Elm and Main Streets. “I pulled up and, you know, there has been a lot of changes to Elm Street and it’s very not marked,” Rama said during her appeal hearing, held at Town Hall. “There’s no lines between the spots and I actually backed up so that someone could pull in front of me and that was actually the right spot to be in, in front of where I was. I didn’t really see the sign.”

Ultimately, Commissioners Keith Richey, Pam Crum, Peter Ogilvie and Stuart Stringfellow voted to uphold the ticket.

Around Town

Town Upholds $50 Ticket for Double-Parking Woman on Elm Street 

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The Parking Commission at its most recent meeting voted 4-1 to uphold a $50 ticket for a Norwalk woman who double-parked on Elm Street. Michelle Santiago told Commissioners during her appeal hearing that she’d just left the People’s Bank parking lot on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 1, turned right and right again onto Elm while she waited for a space so she could get lunch at Pinocchio Pizza. “I was there three minutes, just waiting for a parking spot,” Santiago said during the Commission’s March 14 meeting, held at Town Hall. “The parking attendant comes behind me, I noticed her behind me, she had gotten out of her car, she was checking other cars, then she got back in her car, so I moved up to see maybe she was marking cars with her stick and then after I’d say a minute and then she comes around and gives me a ticket, tells me I was double-parked.