Parking permit issues

[twe.livejournal.com]

About 6 weeks ago (Feb 29) I mailed in my Resident or Visitor Parking Permit renewal form asking for exactly the same thing we got last year: permits for both of our cars and a couple of visitor passes. Today (Apr 12) my application and check were returned to my with my husband's license plate circled and a scrawled note "already has permit issued 3/13 for Mammouth St." We don't live on Mammouth St and have never lived on Mammouth St. His car is clearly registered to our address (and has been since he bought it). Moreover the city happily sends excise bills for his name/address/license plate combination (in fact they sent one on 3/12). My best guess is that permit was issued to someone with similar plate number, who then misrecorded it as my husband's, and whoever processed it could not be bothered to look into the matter at all. (It seems inplausible that these mistakes would have been that hard to uncover; if that isn't so, perhaps the city needs better record keeping systems.) Despite asking for my phone number on the form, no one one bothered to call when a problem was (erroneously) found with my application, they just sent it back without any permits at all. Since they sat on my application for 6 weeks, it's now less than 21 days before my existing permits expire that they require for postal renewals and no longer possible for me to renew my permits by mail. So now, through no fault of my own, one of us has to take time off from work, hike up to Davis Square, wait in line for forever, and then no doubt spend a lot of time arguing with someone at the parking office and the whole process with take a lot more of both their time and our time, but perhaps someone will see this and clean up some processes and policies at the parking office.

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

If you have time to be on the phone during the day, I recommend calling the parking office. I've actually found them to be helpful that way.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Or I can go into the parking office for you; they don't require it to be you, just that you have the registraiton (yes, I realize that's a problem when you drive to work, but yeah.)

[twe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I stood in line for 2 hours with the little guy in baby carrier with the registration two years ago when the car was new, and I wasn't supposed to ever have to do that again if the address didn't change.

[twe.livejournal.com]

I will definitely call them on the phone, but since they sent back my check and my application, I'm not sure how much they can do for me, since I'll have to either mail them the check or carry it in.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Well, when they made a mistake with me, the guy I talked to was very willing to do what he could. So it can't hurt, anyway.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Y'all on this forum should have thought of stuff like this before advocating a big expansion of permit parking across the city two years ago.

Oh wait, almost everyone on here advocated against it. Never mind.

[twe.livejournal.com]

It does not help my irritation levels, that my neighborhood used to not be permit only.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of surprised nobody has posted to rant about the huge cost increase for the permits this year. You'd think with the likelihood that way more people are getting them, they could stay the same. Or at least only go up by, say, 25%, not 50-100%.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

What, nobody has chimed in to say "well, that's what you get for having a car" or "parking permits should be rarer and more expensive anyway?"

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

well, i think most of the folks reading this are at a point in their lives when not owning a car would be a serious inconvenience...

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Oh. Sorry. Let me chime in then: Parking permits should be more expensive. It should cost a non-negligible amount of money to park your car on a public way.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

At what point in one's life does that happen?
I'm in my 40's, and I haven't owned a car or even driven one since 1997. I don't find it a "serious inconvenience" at all.

I don't foresee myself ever needing to have a car...

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

At the point where you travel for work, have kids and need to take them to school and doctor's appointments and stuff, don't live near bus/subway lines, have trouble with mobility...

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

if you have friends who live inconveniently far from public transit, if you'd like to have a place to live that isn't a) tiny and b) scrunched up against 2-3 other families, want to take more than 2-3 bags of groceries home at once, etc. etc.

if you've never felt inconvenienced by not having access to a car in this part of the world, I strongly suspect that you are exceedingly mobile, very tolerant of extreme heat and cold, and more-than-averagely strong. which is fine as far as it goes, but there are lots of people out there who aren't.

[anyee.livejournal.com]

I do hope that you have a job that is always T accessible and never get injured. Neither of those things ever happen to sanctimonious know-it-alls.

[phoenixy.livejournal.com]

I feel like the sticker is totally negligible when compared to the costs of car ownership in general...it's hard to get exercised about the price when a full-year parking permit costs less than a tank of gas.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

Please to not be giving anyone ideas!

[cden4.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Plus it's not unreasonable that in a dense city with many options for getting around that people who do choose to own cars pay a small fee to be able to park it on a public street. I own a car and pay for a permit, and I'm grateful that we have a good system that for the most part keeps parking available for residents and their visitors. (Boston on the other hand is another story. Their permits are totally free and way over-subscribed. And their visitor parking system of dedicated spaces on each street for certain times of day which residents can also use is a total fail.)

I agree though that the parking office really should have notified you via phone or email when they thought there was a problem. That's just good customer service.

[lfitzb.livejournal.com]

Yes it's a public way, but some of us aren't lucky enough to rent a place with a drive way. A city is a city, people will always own cars, I need to it to commute to work where the T is not accessible and I have elderly parents that live outside of MA that I might need to get to on a moments notice.

It's expensive to have a driveway included with rent. It's expensive to live near where I work, so Somerville it is. Also, car owning it is.

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

Well, a parking pass is $30 a year. A driveway is an extra $50-100/month in rent, AFAIK. Somerville could double the charge again and still only be charging one month's worth of having a driveway.

[xuth.livejournal.com]

People will have cars but it's also the official policy of some cities in the area to reduce car ownership. If you feel you must have a car in a densely populated city, expect to pay significantly for the privilege. I think it's somewhat absurd that street parking is subsidized by the city as much as it is.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

So, the good news is that the Dept. of T&P has used some of that revenue to set themselves up a waiting area (with chairs!) and a numbered system like they have at the RMV. Take a number, have a seat, they call your number.

OTOH, it still makes me PO'd that the city essentially forced this parking situation on us under protest. An appointed commission, no less, which means the chances of reversing it are essentially nil. So much for your local democracy... :(

[kimmercake.livejournal.com]

This exact thing just happened to me (I sent in my and my husband's permit renewals for March with no response for 5 weeks which our stickers lapsed) so I called, they said they never got my paperwork which is crap, to come in and do it all in person. So I went to the parking office, got everything squared away. The NEXT day I got my return paperwork and check saying the same thing that you received - visitor permits had already been given to our address so they couldn't process any of it.

The whole system is crap. They've done this to me before - sat on my paperwork with no communication for WEEKS while my permits expired. They have no systems in place for contacting residents when their materials come in and there's a problem. You have to wait to get it all back from them. It's ridiculous. Never once has the mail-in application ever worked for me. Long story short - go in person, it's the only way you can get anything done with them.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Weird. My wife and I lived on the Somerville side of the city line for almost 10 years and never had a problem with the parking permit process. Maybe the expansion of permit-parking areas has increased the workload beyond what the office can manage efficiently?

[kimmercake.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I think they are seriously understaffed.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

The official main reason for expanding permit parking was to raise money for the city (permit fees, and excise taxes on cars that had previously been registered elsewhere).

If they have to hire more employees to issue permits, do they still come out ahead?

For that matter, has there been an official report of the actual financial impacts of the permit expansion?

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

Anecdotally as a landlord I've observed many potential tenants say they have to have off street parking so they don't have to register/insure there vehicle in Somerville. Unless they were only going to be living here for a couple months, I usually avoid renting to this type. The relevance to the conversation is I'm sure when there was still plenty of non permit parking that there was a ton of tax avoidance. I can't compare that to the cost of increased personnel and administration, but it is there.

[lizzyclean.livejournal.com]

This may not lessen your irritation, but they are open until 7 pm on Thursday nights. I recently went during these hours and only had to wait maybe 7 or 8 minutes. I know the city/mayor has been working to change people's experiences when they go to the parking office and it's really a LOT better. The woman who waited on me was really nice. I wish you good luck!

[dashford.livejournal.com]

The above was exactly the same experience that I had this past Thursday evening. I think as long as you don't leave it for the last Thursday in the month you should be fine.

[anyee.livejournal.com]

One of the oddest things about the Fenway was that parking was completely free to residents. Even though the Fenway area is far more population dense and harder to park in, all you needed was proof of residence and boom, free on-street parking. Granted, that's why my car looks like a bomb hit it, but still. Free.