Last year, voters were divided over whether to keep or toss the city’s overnight winter parking ban. So, Public Safety and Transportation Committee Chair Tarik Lucas put together a working group to come up with a compromise, a piecemeal plan that would lift the ban where it made sense to do so.

The first fruits of that labor made it to the full City Council Monday night in the form of an enhanced Traffic Council power pertaining to diagonal parking spots.

“This is definitely a step in the right direction,” Councilor Susan Albright said. “It does not solve the problem for many residents of Newton, and I plan to vote for it but we need to do more and we need to do better.”

That step will have to wait, as there was so much confusion in the room Monday night that the Council ended up postponing a vote.

A new angle on the parking debate

The Traffic Council already has the authority to make perpendicular parking spots eligible for overnight parking in winter. As it stands, the only place that has those is a small strip of Chestnut Street in Upper Falls.

On Monday, Lucas brought forth an ordinance amendment that would add angled parking spots to that Traffic Council overnight parking exemption power.

And like all things parking related, it sparked a debate among city councilors.

There are five locations in the city with angled spots:

• Albemarle Road in Newtonville
• Washington Street in Newtonville
• Beacon Street in Waban
• Auburn Street in Auburndale
• Commonwealth Avenue near Centre Street and Grant Avenue

Lucas said that if the City Council approved the amendment, the Traffic Council could start a year-long trial allowing overnight parking in the angled spots on Albemarle Road.

Councilor Randy Block, who voted against the measure in committee, said he was concerned that it didn’t restrict the exemption authority to existing spots.

“There’s nothing stopping the city from creating new angle or perpendicular parking, which my reading of this proposed ordinance would all of a sudden make them eligible for this provision,” Block said. “I don’t think that’s the intent, but I think that could happen.”

Block said he’d be more comfortable if the vote was on Albemarle Road specifically.

Pumping the breaks

Councilors Lisle Baker and Julia Malakie also shared uneasiness with a blanket authority that could have the city adding new angled spots to get around the ban in parts of the city where residents support keeping the ban.

Lucas noted, several times, that the plan would not create any new parking but rather allow the Traffic Council to exempt angled spots from the overnight parking ban the way it’s allowed to exempt perpendicular parking spots.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the Traffic Council wouldn’t be able to approve new angled spots, and thus, new spots eligible for overnight parking, at some point in the future.

“This is a little awkward going back and forth,” Malakie mused as Lucas threw his hands up.

Councilor Rena Getz—worried about Waban’s Beacon Street angled spots—called for an amendment excluding angled spots abutting businesses from the overnight parking ban exemption (meaning she doesn’t want the Traffic Council to be allowed to approve overnight winter parking in angled spots in front of businesses).

Getz removed her motion after Baker motioned to hold the matter for a later meeting, to get questions answered and confusions cleared.

Baker’s motion to postpone was passed with a 16-8 vote.