NORWALK — Commercial vehicles parked on public streets has become a problem in some Norwalk neighborhoods, based upon complaints brought to the city.
Members of the Common Council’s Ordinance Committee discuss the problem during a meeting at City Hall last Tuesday evening.
“We have a situation in several different neighborhoods that people are basically running commercial businesses out of there home, whether it be a limo service, so they’ve got all their limos lined up, or their SUVs, whatever it may be, landscaping companies,” said Councilwoman Shannon O’Toole Giandurco, former chairwoman of the committee. “It’s the one address and there’s five to seven work trucks lining the street.”
O’Toole Giandurco counted the Golden Hill Neighborhood as the most recent area where the problem has been brought to the city’s attention.
Assistant Corporation Counsel Brian L. McCann said a limousine business operator operating from his residence had four or five limousines parked in his driveway.
“Zoning issued him a cease-and-desist order, so he kind of cleverly took all five limousines and just put them out into the street,” McCann said. “And then Zoning got calls from every single neighbor on that street saying, ‘Great job. You just evicted him from the driveway and put him in front of my house.’”
McCann said, to his surprise, that such parking is legal in Norwalk but isn’t allowed in some other Connecticut cities. Under Norwalk regulations, commercial vehicles with hauling capacities of 1.25 tons or greater may not be parked on a city street for more than four hours, according to McCann.
“So right now, it’s four hours and the vehicle has to be one and a quarter ton, which is a pretty big truck,” McCann said. “Joe’s Plumbing truck would not qualify, so he could have a couple of those parked more than four hours on the street.”
Councilwoman Eloisa M. Melendez, committee chairwoman, said such parking also becomes a safety issue.
Committee members raised several potential solutions, including lowering the hauling capacity weight.
“If we were to adjust the tonnage downward, we would provide the police some flexibility in avoiding an egregious situation,” said Council President Bruce I. Kimmel, a member of the committee.
McCann described commercial vehicle parking as a “number of vehicle” rather than “type of vehicle” problem. That makes regulating such activity difficult, he said.
“We checked with the Police Department and we ran by them, ‘What if we had some kind of restriction, no multiple vehicles registered to the same name on the same block?’” McCann said. “What if we got creative with it like that?”
Committee members concluded that the vehicles owners would “become creative,” registering different vehicles to different businesses.
Councilman Thomas P. Livingston, a member of the committee, posed another possible solution.
“Some cities have permit parking on the streets, so residents would get a permit, so they can park one vehicle or two — whatever the number is,” Livingston said. “That would sort of address the number issue.”
McCann said committee members ultimately must decide whether “to take that big step.”
“You have to just decide whether you care about it enough that you’re just willing to commit all the resources and the energy and the time to a commercial vehicle and registration program,” McCann said.
McCann cited Commercial Tire & Recapping on Brookfield Street as another example of commercial vehicles parking on city streets. Trucks as large as 18-wheel tractor-trailers are sometimes parked on the street, and the city has taken the business to court for violating zoning regulations governing storage on the property.
Nick Maraglino, owner of Commercial Tire, on Thursday rejected the city’s assessment of the situation. He noted that his business has operated since 1960.
“We’ve been there since 1960 and we haven’t been doing anything differently,’ Maraglino said Thursday. “We don’t park them on the street. We pull them off the street. Sometimes it takes a while to juggle them around, but they don’t park on the street.”
Ordinance Committee members plan to resume their discussion about commercial vehicle parking at their meeting in January.
Source: https://www.thehour.com/norwalk/article/Ordinance-Committee-tackles-commercial-vehicle-8110050.php