The Newton Public Safety and Transportation Committee met again Wednesday night to review recommendations by the city-appointed winter overnight parking ban task force, taking its first straw votes on how to reform the ban for the coming winter.

After a ballot initiative to repeal the ban narrowly failed last fall, a city-appointed task force reviewed potential reforms to the city’s rules and presented recommendations to PST last month. Now it’s the city council’s turn to review the options and create new rules for a trial this winter. Overnight on-street parking in Newton is banned between Dec. 1 and March 31.

In Wednesday’s meeting, the committee mostly agreed—voting 4-0-2—to advance an ordinance amendment expanding angled parking access. These smaller patches of parking could help close the gap for people who live far away from municipal lots.

“It’s just a way to give people more options,” said Tarik Lucas, Ward 2 councilor-at-large.

Another issue that the committee took up was opening up more of the roughly 1,500 city-owned parking spots. That number is according to Newton Chief Operating Officer Josh Morse, who presented at the meeting. The only problem, he said, is that each lot would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not spots should be available to the public, and whether or not the city should set up permits to determine who can access them.

“It is more complicated than it appears, but it’s not insurmountable by any means,” Morse said. “It just means that each one of these is going to have to be looked at individually.”

The committee also weighed adjusting the ban’s duration. Ward 6 Councilor-at-Large Sean Roche spoke in favor of shortening the ban from Jan. 1 to early March. Both because he saw a smaller chance of snow accumulation in that period and because a later start would give the city council more time to finalize regulations before the trial ban goes into effect this winter.

“The snow accumulation in December and at least in later March, and maybe all of March, just isn’t significant,” Roche said. “I think that it’d be very straightforward for us to say, ‘Start Jan. 1, end March 1 or March 15.”

Ward 4 Councilor Randy Block wasn’t convinced, arguing that adjusting the ban’s duration doesn’t get at the root causes of residents’ parking problems.

“Shortening this by 30 days, 45 days does not get at the fundamental problem that there are people in the city who don’t have any place to put their cars,” Block said.

But addressing the range of residents’ concerns might not be relevant to the narrow question of the overnight parking ban, according to Roche.

“The number one salient concern, or the one that matters to me when I’m thinking about this stuff, is the snow accumulation on the streets and what that does to narrow the streets,” Roche said. “That is the thing that distinguishes the winter ban from all the other months where there is no ban.”

The committee was tied in a straw vote on shortening the ban from Jan. 1 to March 15, with two members in favor, two opposed, and two abstaining.

The committee held off on voting on temporary exceptions to the ban, opening up municipal lots, and exceptions for people with disabilities.