Both the Brookfield village board and the members of the advisory Public Safety Committee earlier this month officially shot down a staff proposal to severely restrict on-street parking within the village.
The decision comes at the end of a process that began more than a year ago. In April 2010, village management sent a proposal to the village board suggesting that parking be limited to the north and east sides of residential streets and that street parking be banned during heavy snowfalls and on street-sweeping days.
In the end, trustees and safety committee members simply believed the proposed restrictions wouldn’t have worked.
“We can’t fool ourselves into thinking there is enough garage space, that you should just clean your garage and park in the garage every time they come and go, including in a snowstorm, that this will solve the problem,” said Village President Michael Garvey at the village board’s Committee of the Whole meeting on Aug 8. “I think we have some responsibility to find parking within the same ZIP code for people.”
Staff’s proposal was the result of meeting between Ginex, Assistant Village Manager Keith Sbiral, Public Works Superintendent Al Kitzer and Fire Chief Patrick Lenzi. Attempts to hold public meetings about the parking proposal fizzled in 2010 but gained steam again this year.
The Public Safety Committee held two meetings, one in March and one in May, to gather more input from residents. The meetings were not well-attended and those who did attend the meetings came out clearly against the proposal.
“At [the May 24 meeting at] Gross School there were 40 to 50 people there, and I would have to say that at least 95 percent of them were completely against this.”
On Aug. 2, Public Safety Committee Chairman Roy Lehto sent a letter to Village Manager Riccardo Ginex stating that his committee couldn’t support the proposal. In addition to not being feasible during major snow events and street-sweeping days, Lehto wrote that “residents with disabilities live on both sides of the street on each block, meaning some disabled residents could not use their designated disabled parking spot in front of their home.”
Lehto also stated that “many residents have more vehicles than space available in their garage and they do not have the option of parking in a driveway.”
Those points were reiterated by village trustees on Aug. 8 although they did agree that the board could tinker with current parking rules to help ease the difficulty of plowing streets during big snowstorms.
One of the suggested changes was to increase the one-side-of-the-street parking restriction currently in place when two or more inches of snow accumulates on the streets. Garvey suggested changing the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. restriction to 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
While the village could work harder to publicize the rules and aggressively ticket cars that are illegally parked, the key to any new rules, Garvey said, was for residents to cooperate.
“We’re going to need people’s help if this is going to work,” Garvey said.
The board is also expected to look at a recommendation from the Public Safety Committee in September to limit parking more severely in the Hollywood section of the village, where it’s very difficult for large emergency vehicles to traverse the narrow, curving streets during even the best conditions.
The only trustee who argued for the stricter rules regarding parking on one side of the street, particularly during the winter, was Michael Towner, who called it a “public safety issue.” He suggested that village staff do a street-by-street survey to collect data for targeted rules for different areas of the village.
“I still would say that during the winter months, different sections of the town should be one-side-of-the-street parking,” said Towner. “DPW will then be able to cover those streets faster and then get to the alleys faster. I’ll take what I can get, but my leaning is that we should still look at, from Dec. 1 through March 30, one-side-of-the-street parking.”