The City of Somerville plans to implement a new policy requiring parking permits for all vehicles parked on residential streets in the city, complicating an already difficult parking situation for many Tufts students living off campus.
In an attempt to simultaneously raise money to balance a budget deficit and free up crowded parking spaces, the new policy would require all non-commercial vehicles parked on Somerville's residential streets to have a resident parking permit or visitor pass. This highlights a problem unique to Jumbos who don't live on the Hill.
To receive a resident permit — renewable annually — a car must be registered in the city. "The problem is that many Tufts students don't have their cars registered in Somerville," Somerville Alderman Walter Pero told the Daily.
Students often do not register their cars in the city because doing so can result in large increases in their vehicle insurance payments. Cars often remain on family insurance plans and are registered to students' homes away from Tufts during the students' one or two years off campus in the vicinity of Tufts' Medford/Somerville campus.
The new policy is a response to too little money and too few open parking spaces, according to City of Somerville spokesman Tom Champion. Two thirds of residential streets already fall under permit restrictions, according to Champion.
Streets near Tufts affected by the change include College Avenue from Powder House Square to Morrison Avenue and Boston Avenue from Pearson Avenue to Broadway.
The policy will seemingly not apply to streets running through campus, as the university administers parking regulations in school lots and streets.
"Somerville was dealing with a situation in which parking — which had always been a scarce and valued community resource — was coming under even greater stress, and therefore it made sense to alter the longstanding parking regulations," Champion told the Daily.
But the universal nature of the new policy poses problems, Somerville Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz said, as not all neighborhoods see high demand for street parking.
"I think that we should be thoughtful about the policies that we enact in the city and make sure that they're responses to the needs of each neighborhood," Gerwitz told the Daily.
Still, she added, there are some positive aspects to registering cars in Somerville.
"It's not very expensive and they're legally parked on the street," she said. "And then students can park anywhere they want throughout the city and not worry about getting a ticket or finding a street that's not permit parking."
Junior Mike Niconchuk disagrees. He lives on Sunset Road in Somerville, already designated permit parking, and said changing his insurance would result in drastically higher fees.
His car is registered to his home in Topsfield, Mass., and he said changing its registration to Somerville — designated by his insurance company as an urban area — would raise his payments by several hundred dollars.
Niconchuk believes the new policy is just a simple way for the city to take advantage of something for which demand will not significantly decrease anytime soon.
"When I'm walking down Sunset every morning, I see at least two or three parking tickets," he said. "It's just a very easy way for them to capitalize on fundraising."
Somerville is taking advantage of residents who aren't going to change their driving and parking habits, Niconchuk said. This summer, before he worked out an arrangement to park in a house's driveway, his street-parked car received three tickets.
"I'm either going to keep getting parking tickets or find a new place where the police don't patrol as much," he said of his mentality this summer.
Parking permits are expected to raise $1.75 million to $2 million in much-needed revenue annually, which will contribute to closing the city's $12 million budget deficit.
Commuter traffic into Somerville also played a significant part in the decision, Pero said.
"We have T stations in the western and eastern parts of the cities, and the streets in those vicinities have all become permit parking over the years, because we don't want commuters coming in from the suburbs leaving their cars here all day, clogging up the streets and then taking the T into Boston," Pero said.
Though the new policy may pose some challenges to residents, Champion said that mandating permits is a preventative move against more serious future problems.
Some students in Somerville have gotten around resident passes by increasingly turning to one alternative offered by the city: visitor permits.
Those permits, two of which are available to all households in Somerville, allow vehicles to park in areas with permit restrictions for two days each week. The passes are confined to a certain geographical area, according to Champion.
Junior Yael Stern, who uses visitor parking passes outside her house on Teele Avenue in Somerville, said that her street does not have many occupied spaces. Time restrictions on visitor passes seem unwarranted, she said.
"It makes the rule more frustrating," Stern said. "They do a pretty good job of discouraging [parking] if you don't have a permit."
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Ben Gittleson contributed reporting to this article.
The article originally stated stated that a new parking policy in Somerville "will significantly alter parking on Somerville streets near Tufts." In fact, many Somerville streets near campus already fall in permit-parking zones, so the new policy will not make a big difference near Tufts. Somerville Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz's name was misspelled. These mistakes were corrected 10/28/09
