Guttenberg Mayor David Delle Donna proposed a plan to the Township Council at the latest caucus meeting a week ago Thursday night to free up more parking for residents and cut down on parking nightmares residents have been experiencing.
First, Delle Donna asked for the council to consider changes in the current visitor’s parking permit regulations. “I want to see the permits changed to be good only until midnight,” Delle Donna said. “From midnight until 9 a.m., there would be no visitor parking allowed, unless someone registers the visitor for an overnight permit at Town Hall beforehand.”
Delle Donna added, “The biggest complaint we have from residents is that there is no parking for residents when they come home at night. You see as many visitor passes with people with New York plates. Some say that they lost their visitor’s pass and then give them to friends. It’s a plan that needs some tweaking, some revisions.”
Another plan Delle Donna devised will insure that spots where parking meters currently stand will strictly be for Guttenberg residents, once the meters are no longer in effect after 7 p.m. “Those spots should be for Guttenberg residents,” Delle Donna said. “It doesn’t make sense that they’re not.”
Delle Donna said the way to insure these rules will be enforced is to switch one police officer’s shift from midnight to 8 a.m. to handle parking violations.
“In addition to the four we currently have, we would use an additional officer to simply enforce the resident parking ordinance,” Delle Donna said. “We would be able to rotate that officer every three months or so, in order that one officer isn’t stuck with that duty all the time.”
In another attempt to help the parking problems in the township, Delle Donna has proposed to take a surplus of $300,000 left over from bond money set aside to repave the streets in town last year and put those funds toward purchasing land to build a municipal parking lot.
“The costs to repave the streets were less than what we expected,” Delle Donna said. “So I proposed that we re-direct that money and buy property to build a parking lot, maybe even a three-story parking lot to fit more cars. We’re looking at all aspects to attack this problem.”
Delle Donna said that progress in forming a parking authority in the town is “moving along slowly.”
“I’m thinking of asking five or six volunteers to form a task force committee to get the ball rolling,” Delle Donna said. “To get their ideas and input before the new parking ordinances can go into effect. Then we can worry about getting bonding capacity to start a parking authority.”
Delle Donna doesn’t think he will receive much opposition from the council in seeing the new parking plans go into effect by the time of the next council meeting on May 30.
“I believe they will support me,” Delle Donna said. “I’ve already talked to some of the members of the council and they think it’s a good idea. I’d like to change this ordinance as quickly as possible. I’m not making promises that this is a solution, but it has to help.”
Liquor board news In other township news, the town’s Alcohol Beverage Council Board (which consists of Delle Donna and the Township Council) ruled that two establishments should be closed as part of numerous violations to their liquor license standards.
The board ruled that the Rainbow Caf