Town Upholds $30 Ticket Issued to Elm Street Worker

Town officials last week upheld a $30 ticket issued to a local retail shop worker who overstayed in a Main Street parking space.

The Parking Commission voted 4-0 to uphold the ticket that had been issued to Vanessa Brown.

During an appeal hearing at the appointed body’s regular meeting, Brown said that she parked on Main Street after dropping off her child and intended on moving the car but got there just 15 minutes too late. 

Brown told the Commission that it was raining out on the Monday morning in question and that overstaying in the space “was not intentional.”

“I had to run into work to open the store and then I was going to move my car at the appropriate time and then got stuck with a customer,” Brown said at the Dec. 1 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.

During the appeal hearing, commissioners asked whether Brown was working at the time the ticket was issued (yes), how far away from Main Street she works (at The Linen Shop on Elm Street, so not far), whether she always parks on the street (not always), whether she knows about the free parking permits in the Center and Locust Lots that are available for downtown workers (yes but it’s hard to get one from the business owner and a bit of a hike to the store), 

Commissioner Katie O’Neill said, “On behalf of merchants I will only add that taking customers’ parking is frowned upon.” 

Brown responded that she understood, though some Main Street merchants park on the street “all day without getting a ticket.”

O’Neill said, “They should not be tolerating it from each other, especially implementing our new parking initiatives…. I speak as a merchant family, but when we park on the street, whether Main Street or Elm Street, we are parking in our customers’ spaces.”

Brown noted that on this particular morning, there were open spaces all around her car so “I was not taking anyone’s spot on that particular day.”

“I understand on another day it’s busier,” she added.

During the Commission’s deliberations on the appeal, Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg was asked whether the ticket had been Brown’s first. Miltenberg responded, “Now that the question has been posed to me: absolutely not. She has been booted previously for more than five outstanding tickets. She currently has an outstanding ticket that has not been paid.”

O’Neill asked whether Brown had ever applied for a downtown worker’s permit.

Miltenberg answered that Brown had come into Town Hall to file an appeal and was told about the employee permits. However, Miltenberg said, Brown was under the mistaken impression that her employer needed to secure the permit. 

“I said that’s not the case, the employees can apply themselves,” Miltenberg said.

She added, “I will say that she was in an extremely heightened sense of upsetness. She came into office, so every time I tried to explain to her about the employee permit I was told to please stop talking. So i was not able to get the point across to her.”

O’Neill said that she was “left to wonder where she parks when she works.”

“I just don’t think that what she provided was valid grounds for dismissing a violation,” O’Neill said. “The fact that she has multiple violations is taken into consideration, but for me the biggest issue is parking as a worker where customers are supposed to be parking is a really big deal to me and to everyone in town. I know Mondays are not as busy but we are all trying to allow for people to shop at our merchants and to keep them afloat, and really the grossest violation is when people who work in town take those parking spaces.”

O’Neill, Commission Secretary Kevin Karl and members John Clarke and Marley Thackray voted 4-0 to uphold. Chair Nancy Bemis was absent.

Karl said the case shows how important it is to enforce the same parking rules on Main Street as the town does on Main Street.

Miltenberg said, “Certain people get very upset when they get tickets and I understand the situation and I won’t go into a lot of what transpired in the office… I will say we do know employees park on the street, we can’t stop them as long as they are moving, and if they are not then they are getting tickets.”