MARBLEHEAD — Thirty-eight parking tickets were issued to residents who didn’t abide by the town’s new snow emergency policy Saturday night.
This weekend’s snowstorm was the first opportunity the town had to test out its new winter-parking policy, which was approved by both Town Meeting and the Board of Selectmen earlier this year.
Instead of banning overnight parking from mid-November to mid-April, the town will now ban overnight parking, from midnight to 7 a.m., only on nights that a snow emergency is declared.
Town Administrator Jason Silva said the “significant change” has resulted in a snow emergency parking policy that is similar to surrounding towns.
Built into the change is a home-rule petition, passed by Town Meeting and pending in the state legislature, that increases parking ticket fees from $25 to $100 for residents who don’t remove their cars from the street during snow emergencies, Silva said.
“We just didn’t feel like $25 was enough of a motivation to get people off the street,” said Silva. “Town Meeting did agree and voted for the increase in tickets. That was an integral part of the plan and once that passed and once we were able to implement the proposal, we were all comfortable with the snow-emergency model.
“We think it can work as long as we see compliance from the residents. It was one of those things that had been talked about for a long time. It’s a significant change in town.”
Following Town Meeting approval, the Board of Selectmen voted to implement a one-year trial period for the new policy, which was tested for the first time when a snow emergency was declared ahead of Saturday’s storm, Silva said.
Many factors will be considered before the town declares a snow emergency, including air and road temperatures, weather forecasts and snow accumulation, according to a town memo.
The town will declare a snow emergency when snowfall accumulation is forecasted to be two inches or more, but other factors could contribute to the declaration of a snow emergency, even if snow accumulation is expected to be less than two inches, according to a town memo.
When a snow emergency is declared, residents must remove their vehicles from the street starting at midnight the day of the storm. On-street parking will be allowed the following morning starting at 7 a.m. during a snow emergency unless conditions do not allow it, according to the memo.
Any vehicles parked on-street during a declared snow emergency will be subject to ticketing or towing.
“There were 38 tickets written,” said Silva. “Because of the forecast and the fact that we didn’t see the accumulation that was potentially in the forecast, we decided just to ticket. It was actually a good trial run because we didn’t see the (expected) accumulation. I think we did pretty good with compliance, but we’d obviously like to do better and not write any tickets.”
Silva said the change in policy was first proposed through a citizen’s petition filed for Town Meeting two years ago. He said town officials talked to the proponents of the article and asked them to hold off until the town could put a working group together to consider the logistics of the change, such as towing, where to store the cars, and the potential for an increased fee for violators.
Ultimately, the change was adopted at Town Meeting and the Board of Selectmen, which has jurisdiction over town streets, decided to implement it on a trial basis, Silva said.
“I think everyone is invested in making it work, but if there are challenges with this program, we may need to change or modify it,” said Silva.
