At last nights Select Board meeting, the board had 2 motions to discuss; whether or not to authorize the Town Manager to refrain from collecting parking fees at the Upper Haven Lot (often referred to as the CVS lot) and at the Brande Court Lot. One passed, the other one did not and that’s where it became, as Mark Dockser stated, “awkward”.
Melissa Murphy stated off the discussion with “her decision or my thoughts on it haven’t changed. I think PARC (Parking Advisory & Recommendation Committee) did a good job with the information they had at the time. I think data and parking issues downtown have changed since they made the decision to put the kiosk in… I will not support reinstating them”.
Mark Dockser went next and said “I think the parking situation has changed a little bit but if anything I think it’s even stronger in terms of the case for why we need to do these kiosks now. We unfortunately had the problem of a tough launch at a tough time with a lot of problems so I think we’re colored by that and kind of stuck on it”.
Karen Herrick echoed Mark’s comments and stated “I’m very concerned that the select board cannot refuse to implement what town meeting spent money on and and I think that’s wasteful and that’s on top of all Mark’s comments and the data that Deputy Chief Amendola has presented and I think we can do a better job and I think it’s time to turn these on again and make whatever tweaks we want whether it’s holiday benefits or Senior Benefits I don’t care care we spent them we installed them we need to use them”.
Christopher Haley stated of that he would only be discussing the CVS parking lot and went on to say “The community at the time and town meeting did hear what was presented unfortunately the data then conflicts with the data that actually exists today. I explained last time my vote back then was based off that data. I said I was wrong and it’s very difficult to sit up here and say that I was wrong to recommend something at the time with what we had. It was the right decision then with an 8-1 vote”. Chris then brought up the lack of notification to the business community.
Kevin McCarthy, Senior Planner for Economic Development spoke next and apologized for not directly notifying the businesses of the vote tonight. Kevin stated he will be putting a process in place so that there aren’t things that will affect the the stakeholders and the business community that he should make sure he stays in front of them.
Carlo Bacci went last and brought up his personal experience with the kiosks. “Whitelam Books has been saving their packaging supply packaging that comes with their orders for us for years and this year was an exceptional year for them. I don’t know if they just buying more books or selling more books I’m guessing both so I was there once a week for months at different times and never once was there not a place to park or at least 10 spots. So to me that matters”.
Then it came to the vote on the Upper Haven (CVS) Lot. Melissa, Chris and Carlo voted to refrain from collecting parking fees from 2/4/25 to indefinitely, with Mark and Karen opposing. That motion passed 3-2. And then it got complicated. Christopher Haley then had to leave the room due to the conflict with his office being within 300 feet of the Brande Court lot.
The board had a discussion on what happens on a tie with Mark Dockser mentioning the awkward situation they were now in. If the vote is a tie, the motion would not pass and whatever date was set at the prior meeting would stay in effect. The board didn’t know at the time but according to the October 15, 2024 minutes, the kiosks were supposed to have been turned back on and collecting fees starting on January 15, 2025. As expected, the Brande Court vote was a 2-2 tie, therefore the motion does not pass and it reverts back to the prior vote authorizing the town manager to collect parking fees on the kiosks at the Brande Court lot only.
