Lenox Selectmen looking to enforce parking regulations

LENOX – Parking will be on the agenda at the board of selectmen’s next meeting.

At the select board’s May 15 meeting, the subject of limiting on street parking was raised during Edward P. Lane’s selectman’s report. Selectman Lane and Board of Selectmen Chairman W. David Roche have been looking into onstreet parking for the past few months.

The issue has come up before, most significantly during the selectmen’s May 1 meeting, when it was determined Lenox would switch to three-hour parking for certain streets in town and make this change known through the use of temporary signs.

The main motivator behind this change is to prevent employees in Lenox businesses from taking up parking spaces that might be used by paying customers.

The selectmen made the switch after it was brought up in Selectman Lane’s report, even though parking was not on the meeting’s agenda. Because of this, the board’s actions violated the state’s Open Meeting Law.

Still, at their May 15 meeting, the selectmen revealed there was a difficulty in implementing the change.

“It just doesn’t seem like a workable plan to put the temporary signs on Church Street,” said Selectman Lane, who said, in investigating the manner with Chairman Roche, the street appeared too narrow.

He went on to say the only solution they’d found was to find a few select areas, such as the crosswalks, to post the parking bylaw for the Town of Lenox.

“What we’re trying to do is eliminate…all-day employee parking in front of the stores,” said Chairman Roche. “It has really nothing to do with the tourists, because they come, they park and they go.”

Another option Chairman Roche suggested was to have Lenox Police Chief Stephen O’Brien send a letter to downtown business owners saying the parking spaces in downtown Lenox are for guests and tourists and not for all day parking by employees, and the police would be monitoring the situation.

Still, Selectman Lane pointed out they did need to post their policy, for enforcement purposes, although Chairman Roche said that they might need only one or two signs, as opposed to dozens.

He also said the policy would only be in effect for daylight hours, so as not to inconvenience residents living downtown: “We also don’t want to penalize the people who live in Lenox in apartments.”

Rather than take action on a parking plan, however, the selectmen chose to make it an agenda item for their next meeting.

“I’d love to make that an agenda item and discuss it at length,” said Selectman Kenneth L. Fowler, who has been a leading advocate on the select board for cracking down on street parking.

“I’ve never ever been in a tourist town that allowed you to park all day long,” he said. “What we’re asking for isn’t harsh or unusual.”

The selectmen will be taking up parking as an agenda item at their May 29 meeting.

Posted by Bera B. Dunau on May 23, 2013. Filed under Breaking News,Community News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry