As talks continue over what to do about the city’s overnight winter parking ban, last Wednesday, city councilors heard from the public.
The Public Safety and Transportation Committee held a public hearing last week over the ban, which was perhaps the hottest issue in the 2025 local election.
The voters were split on whether to keep or scrap the ban, so city leaders created a working group to make recommendations for a potential compromise—a piecemeal approach that could preserve the ban in some areas, and tweak or get rid of it in others.
While the vote was split (there was only a margin of 81 votes keeping the ban intact), the public hearing was heavy on comments calling for a repeal of the ban or at least a compromise to make it easier to live with.
“When we bought our house, we had two small children who did not have their own cars,” Ellen Silverman of Newtonville, who supports repealing the ban, said. “Last winter, we had two adult children living with us, each of whom needed a car. So we went from a two-car family to a four-car family.”
With a long skinny driveway, Silverman’s family had to shuffle their cars around after dinner every night.
“We can do it, but it’s not benefiting anyone,” she said.
Frieda Dwek of Newton Centre echoed those remarks, with her family having juggled a crowded house and the parking ban last winter.
“Negotiating who would be responsible for driving one car to the parking lot and one car to drive the other person home was a constant argument,” she said. “Even worse was the morning pickup when everyone had somewhere to be.”
Nonantum resident Daniel Furlong—also calling for repeal of the ban—shared a holiday anecdote to make his point.
“One Christmas Eve, at 3 in the morning on my way to the the restroom, I had left my car on the street and I noticed this light out in the street,” Furlong recalled. “I go down, open my front door, and there was a Newton police officer writing me a ticket for the parking ban on Christmas Eve. And I said, ‘Santa Claus, is that my gift?’ And he looked at me and smiled, says, ‘Well, if you come move your car now, you won’t get it.’ So, in my pajamas, I ran out to move the car.”
Furlong said he has eight people, including someone with special needs, living at his house, and he leaves his house at 4:00 every morning to work his job at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“This [parking ban] just doesn’t work for my family,” he said.
Several commenters recommended shortening the ban by moving the start date to January, since most big snowstorms hit New England after the holidays.
Emily Hoenig of West Newton commended the working group on the work done so far but said she has concerns about the idea of piloting a ban repeal on certain streets. That means those streets would allow overnight parking, and Hoenig wants to know how those streets would be chosen.
“And I think that really needs to be addressed so that impacted neighbors can adequately talk about that with the city before it happens and something won’t be imposed by surprise,” she said, noting that she lives on Watertown Street and, soon, nearby Dunstan East and the West Newton Armory will be full of residents.
“I would expect that both of those, in the absence of an overnight parking ban, would result in overnight parking for residents in these large developments that don’t necessarily have sufficient parking inside of them,” she said. “I don’t think that that dynamic, the large development overflow dynamic, has been addressed at all in the report.”
Skinny driveways, lack of garages and other space constraints factored into most of the comments in support of a ban repeal at the public hearing.
“My family from out of state can’t visit in the winter,” Ron Fein of Newton Centre said. “The nearest municipal lot is too far away to be practical.”
Fein called the ban “a relic of the pre-satellite era.”
“When snow is coming, the mayor should declare a snow emergency and we’ll all get off the street,” Fein said.
And, he pointed out, most nights are snow-free and yet the ban stretched over 120 nights. So the aggravation has no real payoff for the city.
“Every winter night or dawn becomes Tetris,” Fein said. “And starting a car in the cold to move it 20 feet, backing out another, then reparking the first isn’t just annoying. It’s hard on engines and it’s bad for the environment.”
Fein voted last year for full repeal but said he’d be OK with a compromise that shortens the length of the ban.
“It would minimize Tetris,” he said. “It would help people with family or college students visiting for the winter holiday.”
Howard Rosenof of West Newton—a member of the Keep the Ban Committee and the overnight winter parking ban working group—suggested the City Council codify in an ordinance a set of restrictions on the Traffic Council regarding pilot street selection.
“A typical guideline might, for example, be that no exemptions be granted for any parking spaces within or near a zoning district which permits new residential construction without adequate off-street parking,” he said. “We should similarly restrict on-street overnight winter parking near colleges adjacent to other cities and towns and near dense multifamily developments.”
Teresa Sauro of Nonantum, who led the charge against repealing the ban, said she was open to compromise but emphasized that the process needs more clarity.
“From what I have heard, there is actually more common ground between the yes and the no sides than disagreement,” Sauro said. “The common ground should be used to continue the discussion rather than rushing towards a vote.”
Sauro also objected to the makeup of the working group, which doesn’t have representation from every village or ward.
“I know the streets and parking challenges in Nonantum much better than I know the streets in Waban,” Sauro said. “Each village has different conditions, and local knowledge matters.”
You can watch the public hearing on NewTV. And the public hearing will continue on Sept. 23.