Overnight Parking, Take Two

whatever happened to the "parking authority"?

I thought that they were supposed to issue tickets. Looks like the police have been issuing tickets all along.

The purpose of this ordinance, if you ignore the more sinister reasons most towns (and probably this one included) enacted these laws decades ago, is to allow for street cleaning and to prevent/identify abandoned cars. So:
- No overnight parking without permission one night each week (Sunday between 2 and 6am) and no parking on any street when snow is on the ground. Other than that, park at will and stop burdening your residents with one more giant pain in the a**.
Simple.
Of course, simple=impossible here in Montclair.

First of all, in order to be found guilty of a parking violation, people need to be given some concrete form of notice. There are almost no signs about overnight parking on most streets. Other towns have signs describing the restrictions.

Secondly, the permit process in Montclair is broken. Two years to get an overnight permit to park on my usually empty street? Give me a break, how is this fair? Or reasonable?

I think a reasonable overnight parking ordinance would include a form that could be filled out online, or require a simple phone call to the police station. Or a system where residents get a temporary street parking permit for guests.

Joe Hartnett to all of us:

"The proposal briefly posted on the Township website yesterday is not the final proposal."

translated- I'd like to get my candidate elected (Michaelson) and then we'll jam this down your throats!

If the parking authority issued tickets and dealt with the collections it would free up the police department to do what they are trained to do...Police work. Its no wonder you get some annoyed officer taking your parking info. The town is so far behind the curve on this. Alot of people would gladly pay for a permit to park, the town would get lots of $ up front and the parking issue would slowly be resolved.

The first time I got a ticket for overnight parking I complained that there are no signs at all explaining that overnight parking is strictly prohibited on my block. So they told me to watch for the signs when I drive into Montclair, they're there. Well, there are no signs, I've seen the signs for Glen Ridge plenty of times, but not for Montclair. So I called and complained again and they told me it's been a law in the town for so long I should have known as soon as I moved in. So, if my landlord never told me, and I never received a booklet or anything explaining this to me, how was I supposed to know? Why aren't there any signs? Why is this town filled up with a bunch of jerky laws?

We had a few incidents while residing as a renter in Montclair. We had 2 cars and one parking space so we had to park at the Watchung Train Station which was about a 1/4 mile from the house. Not bad if the weather is nice.

1st incident, car wound up with a flat tire late at night outside the apartment. The car had tire lock and we couldn't find key. Called police and told them that we would have the car towed in the morning. Was told that you could not have a disabled vehicle on the road, give us the address and we will "think" about not giving you a ticket. We figured if we gave them the address they would definitely ticket us so decided to take our chances and hung up without giving them the address. Luckily, we did not get a ticket that night.

2nd incident:
Our car was having some engine trouble and we took it to our mechanic. The next day we went on vacation to Florida. We get back from vacation a week later and call the mechanic to find out the status of the car. The mechanic says that it's all taken care of and that they did us a big "favor" and left it parked outside our apartment building a few days ago. Guess what? We got several tickets and the car was towed. Thanks for the "favor".

The last incident occured about a month before we moved out of Montclair. I had gone through a bone marrow transplant and had asked if we could park the car overnight until I had recovered. I was told that I would have to get a handicap tag and that would suffice. I did get the handicap tag and put it in the window. Every once in a while I would get a ticket because the officer probably didn't see the tag in the dark but I would just send in a copy of my tag and they would wave it. Well, one day I got a ticket and mailed in a copy of the tag and it was rejected. When I inquired as to why it was rejected, they told me it was because the car was registered in my wife's name and not mine so I had to pay the ticket. We had put both our cars registrations in her name because we didn't know if I was going to live through the cancer treatment. I don't know what the car registration has to do with the fact that I was disabled temporarily. I was seriously thinking about fighting that one but I only had another month to live there and didn't feel like taking time off from work because I had missed so much of it during my treatment.

I have heard somewhere that someone is proposing that permission for overnight parking require 72 hours advance notice or something like this.

I don't know if this is true, but I have to say that this is a BAD, BAD idea!

Not least and also not exclusively because there is no way that this would not result in people driving home from friends and relatives houses while overtired or not quite sober yet.

It's already hard enough to live in this town if you live in one of the many apartments without an assigned parking space. People canNOT be expected to always plan out someone staying overnight at their place three days in advance.

Of course, they who are "they" probably figure on this and are counting on the extra revenue. I wish they'd try getting more revenue from ticketing dangerous drivers instead of more revenue from making it harder and harder to park.