Overnight parking permits considered

\The Cranston City Council ordinance committee passed a narrowly tailored piece of legislation that would allow those without a driveway to purchase an overnight parking permit, pending a review from the administration.

Current city law prohibits overnight street parking in excess of two hours between 1 and 7 a.m. The permit would cost $100.

Tom Flynn, a Cranston resident who suffers from the issue at hand, was in attendance to plead his case. Flynn has special permission from Cranston Police to park in the street, and Sergeant James Needham guaranteed Flynn would never receive a ticket for doing so under their current agreement.

“I have been here four or five times about parking on my street,” Flynn said. “I do not have a place to park my car. We’ve been talking about this since January. It’s August and all you have to do, no disrespect, but all somebody has to do is go upstairs to the engineering department and look at the house and see that there is no place to park.”

Stycos, the sponsor of the ordinance, placed his initial plan on the agenda in February. The original ordinance was a pilot program for three streets in the city, Grand, Villa and Wheeler Avenues. Residents there could purchase a 1-year overnight parking permit for $100.

The traffic report from engineer Stephen Mulcahy showed that, without a more systematic “prudently measured approach,” the pilot program could not be implemented on a grander scale.

“As evidenced by numerous complaints received in our DPW and Mayor’s office, basic city services including refuse collection and snow plowing are continually obstructed by violators that ignore the City’s current overnight parking restriction,” Mulcahy wrote back in April. “Permitting overnight parking can only exacerbate a perennial problem.”

With that in mind, the body agreed to assemble an Overnight Parking Committee to examine the issue and figure out a way to get the program off the ground.

Council President Michael Farina said the budget process made digging into the program difficult months ago. Now, the new group, set for its first meeting after the finance committee on Sept. 11, will consist of a total of six to eight people. Council members and representatives from the police, fire and public works department, among others, will form the body.

Stycos wanted his ordinance passed in any form he could, so the Council reached a compromise. The legislation would be sent to the full Council, but pending a review by the administration of all the houses in Cranston without a driveway to gauge the scope of the measure.

“The concern is we don’t know how many houses this affects,” Farina said. “We don’t know the size of those streets, if emergency vehicles would be able to get down those streets. I don’t want to pass something and have it affect 200 houses when it affects one.”

Citywide John Lanni, Jr., took issue with how long it has taken to get some form of overnight parking implemented.

“It’s been floating around for at least seven years and we talk about committees, parking on one side, it goes around and around,” Lanni said. “I don’t believe in recreating the wheel. They have overnight parking in Providence and it seems to work fairly well. What is so difficult about this? This is not a difficult problem.”

Both Farina and Director of Administration Robin Muksian advised against taking a plan from another city and assuming it would work in Cranston.

“There are even problems in that city, the parking ban for example,” Muksian, the previous DOA in Providence, said.

The Council didn’t decide which members would sit on the commission, but Farina noted “every councilman want to be on it, but we’ll look at wards most affected, we’ll be fair and impartial as to who wants to be on that.”

In other news, during public comment, Lanni crossed over into the gallery to briefly take the microphone and speak about his resolution in support of a couple of general assembly bills. H5345 and S0187 would prevent non-law enforcement concealed-carry permit holders from going on to school grounds. The former was held for further study on April 25, while the former received the same fate on June 6.

When Lanni first introduced his resolution in May, his motion never received a second so there could be no discussion. It was tabled, so the Council moved on. Since it fell off the table this month, Lanni took matters into his own hands.

“My resolution was tabled without me being able to speak on it, that upset me,” Lanni said. “That’s why I’m here this evening as a member of the public, [because] as a member of the Council I couldn’t speak. I thought it should’ve been debated, but, no, you tabled it. I’m asking members of the committee who have permits to carry guns to recuse themselves from voting on this particular resolution.”

Lanni’s resolution was re-introduced later in the meeting, but once again did not receive a second for discussion.