The Wilton Select Board is wrestling with whether to limit a new parking lot on Sand Hill Road to only Wilton residents.
The board held a public hearing on a proposed ordinance for the parking lot on Monday, but did not take any votes after hearing feedback. Board members themselves also had differing opinions.
The town is building an 18-space parking lot on Sand Hill Road, possibly to be used for visits to the town-owned reservoir, which is open for swimming and recreation. Sand Hill Road and the adjacent Isaac Frye Highway, particularly the area surrounding the entrance to Garwin Falls, have been plagued with parking issues for years, resulting in extensive parking bans being put up along the roadways.
The plan, as presented Monday, is to confine the use of the Sand Hill Road parking to Wilton residents, identified with a car sticker that will be provided free to residents through the town clerk’s office.
“The idea is you would have a sticker, you put it in your car, and you can park in the parking lot just west of the reservoir, and if you don’t have a sticker, you would get a ticket,” Selectman Kermit Williams said.
Currently, parking ordinances for the streets surrounding the reservoir have a fine of $100 for a first offense, and the vehicle can be towed for multiple offenses.
Tom Schultz, a resident of Burton Highway, said he had concerns about the costs of enforcing the plan. The town’s Conservation Commission has volunteered to bear the cost of producing the stickers, but Schultz said that using town staff, including the clerk’s office and Police Department, to administer the stickers and enforce their use had a hidden cost, and if non-residents fought their tickets in court, it could also result in costs for the town. He also said it was bad for “public perception” to be exclusive.
Selectman Matt Fish said previous surveys of the town, as well as a straw poll taken at the most recent Town Meeting, showed the majority of residents would prefer the lot to be for Wilton residents only, with restricting it to Wilton and Lyndeborough being a second choice.
However, Selectman D.J. Garcia said he had qualms about restricting the parking only to residents. He said the lot had been created, in part, because of longstanding parking issues in the area, and the majority of that parking issue was caused by out-of-town cars, which would still be parking on the road if the lot is for residents only.
“We’re recreating the parking issue that was there already,” Garcia said. “I believe we built this parking lot to stop the chief from having to go up and issue tickets, and we’re not addressing that problem. While the straw poll indicated that’s what the residents want, I don’t think this solves the problem we’ve been dealing with.”
While Garcia acknowledged the poll taken at Town Meeting, he said there was also longstanding complaints about parking clogging the streets in the area.
“To me a parking lot solves the parking problem. For me, if I were a resident, I would want them to park in the parking lot and not up and down the street,” Garcia said.
The board closed the public hearing without taking a vote to adopt the ordinance and will revisit it at a later date. The board is scheduled to meet next on May 2.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.