The argument continued at the Saturday, Nov. 14 town council meeting, where commissioners considered a parking ordinance recently revised by the planning and zoning commission. Though less severe than its predecessor, some Dewey residents still found reason to protest.

Barry Howell lives on West Street in Dewey’s residential north end, where planning and zoning says potential parking spots are lost to landscaping placed on town rights of way. Howell said Dewey toes a precarious line in governing the north end, where blocks of residential zoning provide for a more laid-back lifestyle.

“To make it a parking area – that’s stepping over that boundary, I think,” Howell said. He said the north end’s narrow streets would choke on beachgoer traffic.

Mayor Rick Solloway read comments sent to him by John and Susan Sedgwick, also West Street residents.

“We would like to limit any new rules,” the couple wrote. They agreed with Howell: the new ordinance would only lead to more cars clogging north-end streets, looking for a place to park.

The original ordinance, introduced last summer, would have required many properties to alter their driveways by May 2011. In the face of public uproar, planning and zoning returned to the drawing board. The revised ordinance recommends using paint to delineate parking spaces from driveways. It will also require residents to move their mailboxes next to their driveways.

Much of the north side’s potential parking is obstructed by landscaping. On one north end street, a thicket of bamboo fills the right of way.

“We’ve got some serious landscaping in the town’s right of way,” Town Manager Gordon Elliot said at the meeting. Later, he said he was drafting an ordinance to remove right-of-way obstructions, which he would present to the commissioners at the Saturday, Dec. 12 town council meeting. In Dewey’s north end, Elliott said, rights of way typically extend 12.5 feet into properties.

Howell said the town was pushing its luck by requiring property owners to alter their landscaping.

“Grandfathering is a well-entrenched institution,” he said. “If they can take away my parking now, what’s to prevent them from coming back 10 years from now? If you could do it to my parking, you could do it to my house.”

Smith, a resident of Read Avenue one of Dewey’s wider downtown streets, likewise cautioned the town. “You need to know, a lot can go terribly wrong if you push in the wrong direction,” he said.

Solloway said Dewey was only clarifying the town’s existing parking spaces.

“The goal, quite simply, is to best define the parking situation,” he said.

Planning and zoning Vice Chairman David King said Dewey wants to reclaim its rights of way. “It’s not part of private property,” King said. “If you look at the map, it’s pretty clear.”

Commissioner Marty Seitz floated the possibility of renting right-of-way space to residents. “It’s an option,” he later said. “It may help us transition to full management of the right of way.”

He said allowing property owners to lease town land would give them an alternative to destroying expensive landscaping. “It’s at least giving them a choice,” he said.
Elliott said the town will inevitably need to deal with resident hardships on a case-by-case basis. And when it does, he said, officials will need to use diplomacy instead of confrontation.

“We can’t take a hard-headed approach,” Elliott said. To that end, he said commissioners are considering reducing the cost of a board of adjustment hearing from $500 to $100 for parking ordinance variances.

Many property owners cultivate land in the right of way, Elliott said. “It’s not a big problem, so long as they don’t gripe about cars parking there,” he said. “And you can’t put a lamp post there.”