While Newton’s City Council mulls over what to do about the city’s winter parking ban, that ban is now in effect.
The Council has been weighing ideas to eliminate the ban—which prohibits parking on city streets from 2 to 6 a.m. between Dec. 1 and March 31—or adjust it to make it easier to live with in a city where parking is at a premium.
But the Council decided to keep it for now.
Residents are allowed to park in the municipal parking lots overnight, with a free parking permit issued by the Newton Police Department. Those lots do have to be emptied for plowing during snow emergencies, however.
You can find information about parking permits on the city website, along with a map of where the city’s parking lots are located.
If you feel like being a bigger part of the solution, the city is looking for snowplow operators.
“We’ve worked hard to improve snow removal operations and response time,” Fuller said in her email newsletter on Friday. “Unfortunately, as winter approaches, we continue to see our contractors face an ongoing shortage of and difficulty in recruiting plow drivers and we anticipate the driver shortage could impact the time it takes us to clear streets, sidewalks, and school and municipal parking lots.”
Anyone interested should call Bernie McDonald , Newton’s director of streets, at 617-796-1494 or e-mail at berniemcdonald@newtonma.gov.