| Latest Updates – March 4 |
| Hi everyone, Here are the latest updates regarding the Overnight Parking Ban petition. 1) Town Elections – Select Board:The town election is on March 26th, which will mean at least one (but maybe two) changes to the composition of the Select Board. I don’t know if the parking ban petition will be brought to the Select Board before the elections or after, so I am planning for both possibilities. Select Board candidates for 2024: Michael Bettencourt (incumbent) William McGonigle 26 Winslow Rd Vincent Dixon 60 Lake Street Dorothy Simboli 17 Bigelow Ave Note: Richard Mucci (the current chair) is not up for reelection. Question for candidates: I submitted the following question to the League of Women’s Voters to ask the Select Board candidates during the debate to be held March 7th (Jenks Center, 7:30-8:30pm):“In February, a petition was submitted to the Select Board to allow on-street overnight parking anytime there is not a snow emergency. Would you support this petition? Why or why not?” ***How to Help!To ensure that this question is asked, please send an email to candidatequestions@lwvwinchester.org and state that you are also interested in this question being answered by the Select Board Candidates. 2) Network of Social Justice Update Last week, a member from the local Network of Social Justice emailed the Select Boards office to express their support in eliminating the overnight parking ban. 3) The Petition is Scheduled for Discussion I have heard “through the grapevine” that the petition is scheduled to be discussed at an upcoming town government “staff” meeting within the next couple of weeks. I don’t have any other details at the moment. 4) Has Ticketing Stopped for the Season? As of last Friday, I have not seen any vehicles being ticketed for overnight parking. It’s possible that the police have stopped ticketing for this season, but right now it’s too early to tell. For reference, here are the dates that tickets were handed out last year (plus the number of tickets and locations): Nov 29: 4 tickets (Main St only) Nov 30: 12 tickets (Washington, Forest, Cross, and Bacon Streets) Dec 1: 2 tickets (Woodside and Church) Jan 28: 1 ticket (Thornberry Rd) Feb 11: 1 ticket (Garfield Ave) Mar 2: 2 tickets (Brantwood Rd, neighbor complaint) Mar 9: 18 tickets (Webster, Washington, Hancock) Mar 10: 1 ticket (Brantwood) Mar 14: 30 tickets (Webster, Washington, Russell, Rumsford, Richardson, Main, Hancock, Eaton) Mar 15: 31 tickets (Water, Washington, Sheridan, Prince, Park Rd, Main, Lebanon, Hancock, Governors, Arthur) Note that the last tickets of the season were issued on March 15th. I checked the weather forecast and noticed that we apparently had a snowstorm on March 14-15th, 2023. The irony here is that the Winchester Police rarely issue tickets when it actually snows, and for some reason made an exception in this case. For the record: 102 tickets were issues for the entirety of last winter season, while over 200 were issued this past December alone. Thus, we can’t use historical data patterns to predict if the ticketing has actually stopped: only time will tell. Note that it’s possible that my comments at last week’s Select Board meeting may have influenced the Winchester Police to stop ticketing for the season. We shall see. 5) Overnight Parking Date Collection, March 2nd I collected another dataset on Saturday morning: between 2AM and 6AM I counted 450 vehicles that were parked on the streets of Winchester. The point of data collection is to provide evidence that can be used to prove why the overnight parking ban needs to be eliminated. In this case, the data will show that (1) there is very lax enforcement (which suggests the regulation is unnecessary), and (2) the fact that police are targeting specific areas. It is also helpful for people to be aware of just how many vehicles are parked overnight, because there is no lack of people in this town that think the parking ban is effective and necessary. |
