Village abandons effort to change parking rules

SAUGERTIES, N.Y. >> The Village Board appears fed up with trying to devise parking rules that will satisfy people who lack off-street parking while preventing drivers from using municipal lots as substitutes for driveway space.

Board members said during a meeting Monday that there will be no changes to rules that cover the use of lots or winter regulations that ban overnight parking on streets.

Current winter rules ban on-street parking in the village between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. from Dec. 15 to March 15. Proposed revisions called for alerts to be issued through social media, online and over traditional broadcast outlets about moving parked cars off streets in advance of snowfalls.

Village Board member Donald Hackett said there were substantial objections to making changes, including a petition sking for current winter rules to remain in place.

“I’ve personally had five to seven [people] come up to me who are against it,” he said. “They think it [would be] just terrible.”

In August, several village residents asked the board to eliminate the winterlong ban on overnight parking on streets, saying people without driveways were forced to use municipal lots even when there was no snow emergency.

The board also has given up its two-year effort to update rules governing parking in municipal lots. Members say efforts to draft revisions that would prevent drivers from using the lots for an unlimited amount of time have resulted in making regulations even more complicated.

Current regulations prohibit parking in municipal lots from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., but police have told the board there are no rules that can force drivers to move registered vehicles to a different location.