Kidder Ave. area parking alert

[ceo]

If you parked your car on Kidder Ave between Highland Rd and Boston Ave last night, it isn't there anymore. Neither is the top layer of pavement.

So yes, our munificent city officials decided to post emergency-no-parking signs on Kidder sometime last night (I didn't see them yesterday) and then call Pat's Towing bright and early this morning. On moving day, no less. Judging from the number of cars that my wife saw them towing around 10:30, it looks like the advance notification was... less than adequate.

We live on Prichard Ave, and today we got a letter telling us that our street will be repaved next week and that there will be parking restrictions during construction. But I bet nobody was notified of the repaving of Kidder, because there aren't any houses on that stretch that have addresses on Kidder.

Comments

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

So I guess they have to tow the cars to do the work. But, they should not make these people pay for the towing? Especially if they only put the signs up at the last minute. And what happened to the reverse 911 phone system? This is one time it would have been useful. The city could of also notified people by email and at regular city meetings or the newspaper. I can guess Ron Newman had no idea this was going on or he would have almost certainly posted about it here.

I would really like to know how these decsision are made, and who was responsible for making it?

[ad-lib.livejournal.com]

I can guess Ron Newman had no idea this was going on or he would have almost certainly posted about it here.

lol.

[ron_newman]

Umm, I hope nobody's really depending on me to post stuff like this. As a non-car-owner who lives at least 3/4 miles away from that street, I probably wouldn't have posted the notice here even if I'd seen it (which I didn't).

[sarah-raz.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is so obnoxious. Aren't they required to put up signs more than a few hours ahead of time? I know that if you want to put up your own emergency no parking sign from the city (if you need to reserve a spot, say, for moving) you're required to put it up 48 hours ahead of time.

[ron_newman]

You should definitely complain about this to your ward alderman. I assume that would be Rebekah Gewirtz.

[spettacolo.livejournal.com]

The alderman for that area is Sean O'Donovan. Defitnitely give him a call or an email. Those signs were NOT up for 48 hours. I'd say less than 24 hours.

The towing situation in this city is so terrible. You will never get your money back from Pat's towing, but I'd definitely raise a stink about it to Sean AND write a letter to the Journal.

Whose idea was it to rip up a street on the day before a three day weekend... on the busiest moving day of the year?

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

I wonder about this Pats towing relationship with the city too. Sounds like a no-bid contract, backroom deal to me.

[ron_newman]

Pat's Tow partly owns the less reliable of our city's two newspapers, the Somerville News.

They are a blight on the city, which definitely holds back proper development of the Brickbottom area.

[ron_newman]

I mean to say, the towing yard is a blight. The newspaper can at times be entertaining and sometimes informative.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

See...now I remember something similar happened in JP when I lived there, except:
* the signs went up about 3 days in advance (I remember thinking that was fairly last minute)
* when they came to do the work, they simple towed all the cars down a block and left them there, so some people may have gotten a small scare, but the road was straight enough that I'm sure most could just see there car moved.

Anyhow, this really sucks, Somerville's other parking and snow-related activities/rules also suck. I am so glad I live just on the better side of the cambridge line

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

I think their rules are ok, the problem is that they are not all flexible and they keep doing this kind of crap. It makes the whole thing seem a lot worse.