Government

‘I Am Here Because I Don’t Think This Is Fair’: Woman Who Took Up Two Spaces Downtown Argues Her Way Out of $30 Ticket

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Officials recently voided a $30 ticket issued to a Darien woman who admitted that she had obstructed two spaces in parking at Morse Court. Yet Alexandra Eising told members of the Parking Commission during an appeal hearing that she was forced to park over the line because the car next to her already was parked that way and she didn’t want someone else pulling in and dinging her two-week-old vehicle. Eising said she’d been in a rush to get to an 11 a.m. class at Go Figure and pulled into one of the straight spots up against the Mobil station. “I was rushing to get to my class and the car on the right side of me was so far over, so I parked far over because I didn’t want them to open their door into my car,” she said at the March 8 hearing, held in Town Hall. “So when I came back I was five minutes late, I got a late fine—which I deserved, because I was five minutes late—but I also got I took up two spots, so I said, Well that’s funny because my wheel is on the line.

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Talmadge Hill Railroad Crossing

Selectmen Vote 3-0 To Convert 36 Parking Spaces at Talmadge Hill Lot from Metered to Permitted Spaces for New Canaan Residents 

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Saying the Talmadge Hill parking lot can be more effectively used to serve local commuters, the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday voted unanimously to convert 36 daily metered spaces there to permit spaces for New Canaan residents. The change is designed to cut into the waitlist at the commuter lot, recently pegged at 115 people, without requiring feasibility studies and construction work, such as expanding the parking levels there north toward the Merritt Parkway. That type of project, if allowed, remains a possibility—likely for some time next year, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said—but “the cheapest way to increase permit spaces is to take daily fee spots.”

“There is demand for New Canaanites for those Talmadge Hill spots,” Moynihan said at the meeting, held at Town Hall. “When we do have permit spots we oversell by 50 percent, so we have daily fee spots that are sitting empty that we get no revenues from.”

The easternmost/uppermost tier at Talmadge Hill has 36 metered spots and the next level down has 60. Moynihan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted 3-0 to convert the 36 spots at the top into permitted spaces for New Canaan residents.

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Officials Vote To Raise Parking Permit Fees 2 Percent

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Town officials on Tuesday voted to raise the fees for permits at parking lots in New Canaan by 2 percent, settling an open question that had divided the volunteer body appointed advise on such matters. The Board of Selectmen after some discussion voted 3-0 in favor of the modest increase, to take effect July 1:

Parking Commission Chairman Keith Richey, a guest at the meeting, advocated for the increase as a way to build up a fund that’s designed to help with upkeep and improvements at lots such as the Lumberyard, Richmond Hill and Talmadge Hill. “We are taking about [a] $12 [increase] for the most expensive and less for the others,” Richey said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “This is the time to be building up the parking fund, which the increase would do — do the expansion at Talmadge Hill and have some money set aside to maybe do the Lumberyard, eventually — so to me there is every reason to be increasing, particularly when we are not talking about an egregious increase here. We are talking about something at rate of inflation or even below inflation at 2 percent.

Government

‘There Was No Line at the Machine’: Parking Commission Upholds $25 Ticket for Greenwich Man Who Claims He Paid for Space at Morse Court

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Parking officials on Thursday voted 2-1 to uphold a Greenwich man’s $25 ticket for parking in an unpaid space in the Morse Court lot. Though Robert Golden claimed during an appeal hearing that he received the ticket Feb. 10 while waiting on line at a pay machine, Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg said she spoke with the enforcement officer who issued it, and who had a different story. “Because there have been times in the past where people were at the machine—especially on Saturdays because it’s busy—were at the machines paying and they were missed, he now waits to make sure there is nobody at the machine before he tickets the vehicles,” Miltenberg told members of the Parking Commission at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall. “And so when he went around ticketing there was no line at the machine at that point.”

Golden has a different version of events, saying he parked, went to the pay machine, purchased about one hour’s time, crossed Main Street to New Balance and when he came back to his car, “there was a ticket.”

“It’s a very simple story,” he told the commission.

Government

Parking Officials: ‘Clean’ Waitlist for Lumberyard Lot Permits Down to 475

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Parking officials say the number of New Canaan residents now waiting for permits for the convenient Lumberyard Lot next to the train station is 475—the lowest figure in memory. Another 189 names are on a waiting list for the Richmond Hill Lot and 115 at Talmadge Hill, according to Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg. The number of people on the Lumberyard waitlist had stood at 606 in November. But a total of 168 names were removed after people either opted out or failed to respond to a call for a $10 fee to remain on the waitlist, Miltenberg told members of the Parking Commission at their regular meeting Thursday. Chairman Keith Richey called the 475 figure “very interesting.”

“There was a point not so long ago when we would say that there were 1,200 people on the waiting list,” Richey said at the meeting, held in Town Hall.