The hammer is coming down on people who think they can just park anywhere in this town.
At Tuesday’s work session, East Hampton Town Board members discussed how they could further regulate parking in Montauk to create more turnover in the commercial district, allow for better enforcement, and discourage abandoned cars.
Councilman David Lys led the discussion to “help clear up some ambiguity in the code” ahead of the summer season, focusing on four parking lots and on South Erie Street. “This is the time to look at it,” he said.
The last time the town board met in Montauk, on Jan. 14, Jim Grimes, a town trustee and Montauk resident, said South Erie had turned into a waiting area for Ubers. “There’s garbage and people smoking weed. It’s unsavory, what goes on back there.”
But the board decided to table that talk, with Mr. Lys suggesting adding South Erie to the “no camping and overnight parking prohibited” schedule of the town code.
“I don’t know how much of a problem area that is, and I’m a little concerned about not allowing overnight parking, in case someone needs to leave their car since they’ve been out celebrating something,” Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte said.
Councilman Tom Flight agreed, but for a different reason. “I share concern for people who are going away for a week, but taking public transport, taking the Jitney. There is no option anywhere in town for them to leave their cars. Maybe South Erie can allow for longer-term parking.”
“There are some locations where people can park without restrictions,” Mr. Lys said. “They just have to go searching for them a bit harder.”
Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez agreed that South Erie could be a good location for longer-term parking, while questioning the need for so many 72-hour spots in the commercial district. “In the downtown area, businesses want more turnover,” she said.
The board seemed content with Mr. Lys’s other recommendations, however, which he made with the advice and consent of the town’s Police Department and Montauk business owners. In each of the four lots discussed, one at the corner of South Euclid Avenue and South Embassy Street, another at South Embassy and South Elmwood, and two where South Euclid meets Edison Street, he recommended a mixture of 30-minute spots, two-hour spots, and 72-hour spots.
The general idea was to keep the shorter-term spots closer to commercial locations to encourage turnover. The two-hour parking areas would allow people to walk through the hamlet and shop or make a quick trip to the beach. The 72-hour spots would simply place a rule where none had existed before.
Mr. Lys explained that at present, if someone had a town parking permit, that person could essentially leave a car in any of the lots, without repercussions. The recent snowstorm inadvertently made clear how many cars had been abandoned in the municipal lots.
“There are currently a few cars down there that have snow on them and haven’t moved,” he said. With the board’s consent, he said he would work with the town’s attorneys to update the code for the four defined parking lots. Before any legislation is changed, a public hearing would need to be held, he hoped by the end of March. That could put any changes on track to be implemented by Memorial Day.
