What Happened to the Petition?

In February of 2024, a petition was submitted to the Selectboard that requested changes to the overnight parking ban. The purpose of the changes was to balance the needs of the town and the needs of the residents.

The town wants the streets clear in the wintertime in case of snow, while the residents would like to park on the street overnight when there is no forecast of snow. Furthermore, an unknown number of residents in town do not have off-street parking for their legally-registered vehicles and the parking ban presents a hardship for these residents. Some towns make exceptions for overnight parking, and the petition asked the town to consider adding an exception for hardships.

The Town’s Decision

The Selectboard sent the petition to the Traffic Review Committee for Review. This committee is comprised of people who work for the Engineers office, Public Safety, and Department of Public Works. In other words, the committee represents the interests of the town government but not the residents. Predictably, the TRC recommended against making any changes to the overnight parking ban.

The TRC made no attempt to identify how many residents are adversely affected by the ban (such as the number of residents without off-street parking). Additionally , the recommendations never specifically addressed the possibility of making exceptions for residents who did not have off-street parking. For general exceptions, the TRC did not support this option simply because it would take additional time to check if the vehicle had permission to be parked overnight.

The town of Winchester decided that spending a few seconds to check whether a vehicle had a permit was a bigger hassle than residents being forced to park their cars at Jenks every night.

Moving Forward

Practically speaking, the petition is being ignored indefinitely by the Select Board. This is possible due to the following:

1. The number of residents in Winchester that do not have off-street parking for the vehicles is in the minority.
2. The number of residents that do not know (or simply do not care) about the hardships of the minority is in the majority.

Potentially, there is little chance to change the status quo as long as the number of residents who are affected by the ban stays in the minority. In other words, as long as enforcement continues to target specific neighborhoods instead of evenly and fairly enforcing the ban, the overnight parking ban is likely to stay with us for many more years to come.

What is the Problem with the Ban?

I think it’s a good idea to recap the issues that the overnight ban is causing. Some of the issues are not with the ban itself, but enforcement of the ban.

(1) It creates a legitimate hardship for any resident who does not have overnight parking. Some people suggest that anyone who has a problem with this should not have moved into Winchester. This argument is not valid because Winchester has never posted signage to inform potential residents of the ban BEFORE they move here.

(2) There is no transparency of enforcement policy. As a result, we don’t know why (for example) the enforcement increased drastically from year to year.

We don’t know for sure why some neighborhoods are specifically targeted over others. This type of approach to enforcement leads to negative attitudes toward the police department and animosity among neighbors.

Map of enforcement for winter of 2023-2024 (click on map to open in Google Maps)

(3) Fines are inherently discriminatory as they more negatively impact the less-wealth populations. What is more troubling is that last year’s enforcement targeted the less-wealthy neighborhoods of Winchester.

What to do if you are Affected by the Ban

Potentially, the Winchester Police will continue their targeted enforcement policy. Last year, the same streets were repeatedly targeted; these streets were:

• Hancock/Webster
• Grove Park/Verplast/Highland View/Adams
• Sheridan Cir
• Oneida/Seneca
• Kirk St
• Arthur St
• Sylvester Ave.
• Vine St/Elmwood Ave
• Oxford St.,
• Governors Ave

If you don’t have a place to park your car during the winter this year, you should specifically avoid these streets and any main roads next to these streets.

Note that while many of the streets in Winchester were not ticketed at all, while other streets were ticketed only once or twice. The ones above were targeted constantly.

Contact the Town

I think there is a legitimate case to be made about offering exceptions to the overnight parking ban, especially for people who don’t have a place to park off-street. If you agree, I recommend contacting the Town Manager and Select Board members.