party parking

[allli.livejournal.com]

hey all,

i'm hosting a housewarming party next weekend and will have friends coming from both in and out of town. what's the story on parking? is there a way i can get a reprieve for people just parking in my neighborhood? or do i have to find a place for them to park legally and walk here?

i live in the neighborhood above summer st., between davis and porter- it's permit only for the majority of the area.

thanks in advance.

Comments

[lissie930.livejournal.com]

Call the Department of Traffic and Parking - IME they are very willing to work with you on this sort of thing.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

You first need to get your two visitor permits from the office of traffic and parking. They're on Holland St, about five minutes walk north of Davis Square. You will need a utility bill or a lease to prove you live there. (A cell phone bill doesn't count.) Permits cost, I think, one dollar each.

The current procedure for parties seems to be that you tell them how many visitors you will be having, and when, and they give you that many bright-green serial-numbered hangtags for your guest's rearview mirrors. Yes, this is a change from the old policy, which only required one phone call, and not a trip to the office.

Here's the website for the office of traffic and parking (http://www.ci.somerville.ma.us/Department.cfm?orgunit=TRAFFIC), which you might find useful.

[mrpet.livejournal.com]

I have never gotten hang tags. We call in the info and mail in the tickets when people get them. I haven't trusted the mail for them so I just hand drop them off. I do it three or four times a year for around 30 people and I have never had a problem.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

That's what I usually do. But I was in the neighborhood of the OTP on Monday, an just decided to drop in to arrange things in person. Good thing I did, because the new hangtag policy is gonna be a royal pain in the A**!

[mrpet.livejournal.com]

Since I do not know the number of people that show up I will start having to get 50+ tags. They will soon learn that this new policy will cost them more than the paper the tickets used to be printed on.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

If the policy has been changed, then it's *very* recent, because for my party on Saturday, the one phone call method worked just fine.

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

I've lived in Somerville for over a year, and never heard of this rule for calling the traffic office if having many people with cars. It's not on their website or online regs, anyway.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

In general the answer for "how do I do this thing that isn't described on the website" is to call the city and ask them what the procedure is.

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

Its not a requirement a regulation or a rule, it is a courtesy that they can extend to you to prevent your guests from recieving parking tickets.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

I've lived here for about fifteen years, but didn't know of the visitor parking extension policy until my street went resident-permit only.

The business with the green hangtags seems to be brand new; the clerk at the window on Monday didn't know how to do it and had to ask someone else. But now I have six individually-numbered hangtags, all good for the same six-hour window tomorrow night.

[cleanup-davissq.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the neighborhood.
Please remember that your friends' vehicles will be taking the spaces that your neighbors use every day when they come home. Permit parking is there for a reason. Maybe encourage your friends to travel in groups.

[segcube.livejournal.com]

To follow up on cleanup's comment--instead of having your guests take up street parking, you can contact the Traffic and Parking office about reserving spaces in the public lot on Holland (across from Orleans). My husband and I got married in Davis this spring, and we bought 30 spaces for the day. It worked perfectly, and the people at the Traffic and Parking office couldn't have been more helpful.