Council Discusses Measure for Additional Visitors’ Parking Passes

Ward 2 Councillor Ira Novoselsky wants residents to have access to a second visitors’ parking pass.

But his colleagues mostly want to stand pat and see how the new residential parking program progresses before making a change in its current procedures.

Novoselsky said he would like the Revere Traffic Commission to adjust the number of visitor parking permits from one to two per household.

“I know we worked hard on parking permits and the parking regulations, but some of the complaints I have gotten from some of my constituents is that [having only] one visitor parking permit is causing problems within families as far as visiting as the same time,” explained Novoselsky.

Ward 3 Councillor Arthur Guinasso was clearly on the “one-visitor-pass-per-household” side of the issue.

“I worked five-plus years to get a parking-for-residents program in order to save our community,” said Guinasso. “It was out of control, people parking all over the place. And now I think any adjustment to this is way premature. We just started the program a few months ago. I would ask that this not be recognized at this time, based on the fact, ‘give us a year’s chance to get this working’ before we start amending it and taking it down to a situation where we don’t have what we really intended to do in the first place.

“We really wanted to remove vehicles from a neighborhood that don’t really live there and that’s the whole primary purpose of this – to save our neighborhoods,” continued Guinasso.

“Give us a chance to see this thing. People are jumping off the board right away here and they don’t know what we went through to get this in the first place.”

Ward 1 Councillor Joanne McKenna said one of the biggest problems discussed during the development of the residential parking program was visitor’s passes. McKenna said people were purchasing or taking visitor’s passes from people “and leaving their cars on streets for ten days.”

“We don’t enough parking in Revere as it is,” said McKenna. “And to put another 10-20 cars in a household is just going to add to this problem.”

McKenna said she opposed any change to the current visitor’s pass regulations. She suggested that residents call the Traffic Department when they are having a family party and say to officials, “Hey look, I live at so-and-so place and I’m having a family party, can you not come down and tag me for the night. And you know what, they would say, ‘okay’. So that’s all you have to do. But to put this back to where it was is a big mistake.”

A non-resident asked the Council to consider an option where an additional visitor’s pass would be granted if one family member were taking care of an elder relative and another member of the family needed a visitor’s pass at the same time of the caretaker’s visit.

Ward 5 Councillor John Powers said Point of Pines residents are entitled to one visitor’s pass.

“In my own opinion, two visitor’s passes per household is defeating the purpose of having resident parking [in the Pines] because people will be giving those passes to friends,” said Powers.

Ronald Clark, a resident of Whitin Avenue, agreed with Councillor Guinasso’s comment that “it is way too premature” to change the regulations. City Council President Anthony Zambuto moved the issue to the Council’s Public Safety Subcommittee.