CITY LIFE Peeved about parking BY SARA DONNELLY

Last Thursday, a little before noon, Suzanne Parks ran out of her office on Deering Street in Portland to snap photos of five cars hauled onto tow trucks. The cars weren’t being impounded and they hadn’t just landed in a terrible pile up. They were simply parked at the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I have pictures of the tow trucks literally lined up waiting their turn," says the annoyed, and ironically named, Parks. "I’m sure none of the businesses around here want their clients getting towed if they stop in to see them at 10 a.m. on a Thursday when [the parking ban] isn’t posted."

Parks is peeved about a new daytime street-cleaning schedule in the Parkside neighborhood that has led to the towing of 182 cars from just four streets — Deering, Avon, Sherman, and Grant — since the program began on June 15, according to John Peverada, manager of the city’s Parking Division. The pilot program began when the city responded to requests from the Parkside Neighborhood Association (PNA) to eliminate nighttime street cleaning swipes in favor of daytime runs on Thursdays between 10 am and 2 pm. Last week, 25 cars were towed on Thursday. The average nighttime tow haul (covering at least a dozen more streets) is 40 cars.

Michael Patterson, president of the PNA, says parking in the most densely populated neighborhood in Maine is tight and when there’s a parking ban on one side of the street during the evening hours finding a spot for the night can be almost impossible.

"Previously on Sunday and Tuesday [during nighttime parking bans] people would choose not to do what they needed to do because if they left home they would not have their spot when they got back," he says. "I am hopeful that this is a program that does better people’s quality of life."

As for Parkside office workers like Parks, Patterson points out that the program only covers four streets and that the city has held meetings and dispensed fliers on cars warning of the new schedule. Patterson sighs deeply when asked whether he’s heard from Parks specifically.

"Let me stress that Deering Street, prior to the pilot program, had a one-hour limit on it," he says.

But Parks is no enemy of the people. She understands daytime cleaning makes sense in a neighborhood struggling with chronically anemic parking options. She just wants posts about the new ban located beside the old one-hour parking signs. Some ban signs, she says, are "250 feet down the road."

"I totally understand that they have that dilemma — it’s residential in the evening and it’s used by businesses during the day," says Parks. "I just think it should be posted properly so that it’s understood.

"And I want my towing fees back."

(Parks’s parking missteps have cost her $130 so far.)

Peverada says a neighborhood meeting to review the pilot program will be held in late fall, when the city will consider canning or expanding the daytime cleaning. As for the signage, "When we implemented this program we replaced existing signs with the new signs," says Troy Moon, the solid waste manager, who’s in charge of street sweeping. "We’re reviewing sign placement throughout the city."