Residents balk at Malden sticker parking plan

In committee meetings held in recent months, advocates of the plan took deliberate pains to gather consensus from other city departments, Kinnon said in February, a process that he acknowledged last night was undertaken in reaction to the controversial pay-as-you-throw trash ordinance. (Critics said the trash bag program was passed without substantial public input; a ballot initiative to repeal it narrowly failed.)

The council consulted with the traffic department, and gained approval from police union leaders and Chief James Holland in December, when councilors were still edging around the shape of an ordinance that for practical purposes is still written in pencil.

Last night the questions were more hostile and confrontational than during the first meeting last month when residents' queries were aimed at the structure and function of the plan, rather than its validity or worth.

Some said they were concerned with the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. parking ban, when only cars with the right color sticker may park in a ward. Some said it amounted to a curfew for adults, who would be liable to ticketing if they parked on a city street outside their own color-coded ward past 11 p.m.

"What you're doing is putting a curfew on people in Malden," said one woman, who did not give her name.

Some took issue with the cost, and said the particulars of the fee structure were burdensome, specifically the requirement to pay both a sticker fee in the future and yearly excise tax on vehicles.

But Kinnon rebutted, and said the stickers would be free to everyone whose excise tax is up to date. The fee only kicks in when residents purchase a new vehicle, he said. And combined with savings from the city's owner-occupant tax abatement, the overall average tax burden for residents has leveled or decreased, he said.

Present was Ward 1 Councilor Gary Christenson, Ward 5 Councilor Barbara Murphy, Ward 4 Councilor James Nestor, Ward 3 Council Paul DiPietro, and Councilors at Large Craig Spadafora and Deborah Fallon. Some of them took a turn at the microphone answering the audience's questions. Fallon left the hearing before questions began, saying she had to attend another meeting.

By requiring residents to register their car in Malden and pay excise tax to get a sticker, Kinnon has said the program will reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncollected revenue the first year from renters and others who dodge the bill now. The estimated windfall could be as much as $500,000, other councilors have said. Everett, a substantially smaller city with fewer vehicles, took in $300,000 its first year with sticker parking, Kinnon has said.

The cash, in turn, would provide a needed bump going forward each year that would help support the salaries of the new parking enforcement officers and to maintain the thousands of signs required to make the plan feasible.

Murphy, who was perhaps the most modulated of the councilors, said the proposal is one aspect of the council's evolving attempt at securing residents and neighborhoods.

"Every day we [on the council] struggle to find a way to keep this city safe," she said. "This is one avenue. This is not a done deal."

Responding to what some said was nickel and diming, Murphy took a round view of the public safety situation in Malden.

"There is no one solution that will make everybody happy. Some of you will agree with them, some of you won't," Murphy said.

The paper will go back to the Public Safety Committee before it could go before the council.