NAHANT — The Board of Selectmen voted Wednesday night to increase certain parking violation fees in town, effective immediately after the vote.
Code A parking violations have been raised from $50 to $75 except for expired inspection stickers.
“I’ve been hearing the chief say on several occasions that people were really scoffing at the current parking fees, and it wasn’t really dissuading anyone from illegally parking,” Selectman Pat O’Reilly said.
However, O’Reilly supported the increase.
“It is time that we increase this, this fee modestly, for the intended effect, to dissuade people from parking where they’re not supposed to be,” he said.
Chair Rob Tibbo said the discussion he has heard “is that there are beaches in on the North Shore area, Essex County, where you can pay upward of that amount just to park at the beach, so it’s, it’s conceivable that people would look at that as just basically the cost of coming to our beaches, and so I think this is a good way to try and dissuade that.”
The Board also discussed the creation of a formal parking policy.
Town Administrator Alison Nieto said the town currently does not have a formal policy, but there is a frequently asked questions page on Nahant’s website.
Selectman Patty Karras said the policy needs to outline guest parking, which is currently missing from the drafted policy.
“There is one line that says for streets with signage that states ‘resident parking only,’ the vehicle plate will be run. Well, what happens if it’s a guest and they’re parked? I think we need to stipulate that in the parking policy. We really need guest passes,” she said.
O’Reilly said he agreed that guest parking should be addressed in a policy; however, “I don’t think all streets can really accommodate visitors equally. I think … some streets can’t have any on-street parking, but some streets are very constrained under the number of resident parking spots. So, I think we need to be really looking at this at a street-by-street level.”
The Board voted to table the matter until its next meeting in June.
