City Plans To Crack Down On Illegal Parking In Downtown Summit

SUMMIT, NJ — As illegal parking has become rampant in downtown Summit, the council discussed ways to crack down on the issue at last week's City Hall meeting.

Director of Parking Services Rita McNany introduced an idea to install sentry safety sticks at various problem areas downtown, as well as a proposal to increase fines for parking violations.

McNany explained that the sentry sticks are solar-powered bollards that contain a camera inside. When someone pulls into an illegal spot or a "prohibited area," it will trigger the sentry stick to snap a photo of the vehicle after 90 seconds.

The following day, Parking Services would receive the image and review it. The information would then go to the municipal court who would then issue a ticket.

McNany said if an authorized vehicle is parked in a commercial loading zone, or if an emergency vehicle is parked there, a ticket will not be issued.

"Currently we have these ugly, yellow sand-filled barricades with a sign that says 'no parking,'" McNany said.

She added that people often moved these barricades in order to get away with parking there.

McNany showed a map of potential areas to install the sentry sticks. She said a particular problem area is on Union Place and Springfield Avenue.

The council recently approved a resolution to remove parklets on Union Place to free up eight parking spaces on the busy street.

Read more: New Rules For Parklets Established At Summit Council Meeting

McNany said these sentry sticks have been installed in Garfield and "work very well there."

Councilwoman Jaime Levine asked about issues of privacy and where these images will be stored.

McNany said the image is stored in the Cloud and is only used for the municipal court's purposes. She said the image is only stored for 60 days.

"This is going to be a big help to Director McNany because we are missing so many violations right now," Councilwoman Delia Hamlet said. "We just don't have the city staff to do that... This is really an opportunity to crack down on [illegal parking] and make traffic flow a lot faster, which I think is going to be a huge win."

McNany also spoke about raising parking ticket fees in order to deter people from parking illegally. Currently, she said parking fees in the city range from $26 to $41 for violations such as overtime meters, meter jumping and City Hall parking only.

She proposed that the city increases the fees to $41 across the board.

"I'm looking to bring up some of these violations to where other towns have them as," McNany said. "The major jump that I'm recommending is in the prohibited parking, specifically for the safety stick violations."

The city has to pay to safety stick company $15 for each time a photo is taken that results in a ticket being issued. McNany said raising the parking fee will help the city pay the company for this cost, but she said it will also serve as a deterrent for people parking illegally.

"We're not trying to raise revenue, McNany said. "It's a tool to stop the behavior."

Council President Greg Vartan said these two ideas will be discussed by Community Programs and Parking Services and will potentially appear on the city's agenda in the near future.

You can watch the entire Jan. 17 council meeting on YouTube below:

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