Demand for Parking Ban
Residents of a Napeague neighborhood along the Atlantic beach are facing down Memorial Day without the no-parking signs that stood for years along the west side of Dolphin Drive, and are predicting traffic and problems caused by people seeking a spot to park so they can go to the ocean beach.
On the east side of Dolphin Drive is the town-owned South Flora nature preserve, a site for which future plans are still up in the air. While the ecologically fragile land will be protected, a draft management plan developed by members of the town’s nature preserve committee that calls for an area where visitors can park also has the neighborhood residents up in arms.
Jonathan Wallace, an attorney who lives on Dolphin Drive, has filed suit against East Hampton Town. Allowing parking on that street, he contends, threatens his health and well-being if ambulance and fire trucks are unable to pass, “threatens to create intolerable congestion on the street,” the suit says, and could threaten his house because “any erosion of the South Flora nature preserve dune system” would “amplify flooding.”
Neighborhood residents who spoke to the town board last Thursday and on Tuesday painted a picture of cars speeding through their streets seeking places to park and beachgoers who will leave litter on the sand.
Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said Tuesday that a survey authorized last week by the board would determine the width of the road and its right of way along Dolphin Drive and the border of the nature preserve — information that the board will consider in determining what to do about parking along the street.
The draft management plan for the preserve has not been formally submitted to the board for consideration, but when it is it will be publicly discussed, he said, with a hearing held to solicit public comment before a management plan is adopted.
Mr. Cantwell said Tuesday that “it would be a mistake to leave that street without any parking restrictions whatsoever” during the coming season. “I think the board has to address the issue for this summer,” he said.
Residents had protested some time ago when no-parking signs along the west side of Dolphin Drive were removed. Although the signs had been up for years, a search of the town code found no law on the books prohibiting parking. The no-parking signs had been changed to signs allowing resident-only parking for a time.
Having cars parked along the road would inhibit emergency vehicle access, Mr. Wallace told the town board last week.
On Tuesday, his wife, Mary Wallace, told the board the neighborhood is facing an “urgent, urgent, dire situation.” Without a parking ban, she said, “We’re inviting cars and strangers into the neighborhood who are going to be speeding through. Believe you me,” she said, “somebody’s going to get hurt.”
“We are going to go up to every level of government,” she vowed. She urged the board to “kill that management plan,” calling it “a danger to our community,” and to reinstall the no-parking signs.
“We believe our street will be taken over by the party crowd and look like Cyril’s did before the town took action,” Mr. Wallace said in an email on Tuesday. “We are afraid of drunken drivers but also of congestion so great ambulances and fire trucks will not be able to reach us.”
“The town’s liability for an injury or death here, or failure of an emergency vehicle to get through, will potentially be immense,” he said.
In his lawsuit, Mr. Wallace demands a judgment from the court that the change in the parking signs, from no parking to resident-only parking, and finally the removal of the signs altogether, was illegal. He seeks to have the no-parking signs restored, and asks that the court permanently block parking there.