Public Works Committee

“Where People Count” Public Services 6849 W Touhy Avenue, Niles, Illinois 60714 Telephone (847) 588-7900 ● Fax (847) 588-7950 PUBLIC SERVICES COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES JUNE 30, 2015 Call to Order The meeting was called to order. Roll call was taken and Danette O’Donovan Matyas, Mary Anderson, Fred Braun and Dan Balzano were all present. Approval of Minutes - April 2, 2015 Meeting A motion was made to approve the minutes and seconded. Aye – 4 Nay -0 New Business Item One: Danette O’Donovan Matyas discussed concerns raised by residents living in the neighborhood East of Notre Dame. Notre Dame recently raised the parking fee for students, which has apparently resulted in students parking on the street in this neighborhood. Residents have called the Village with concerns about safety and other inconveniences. After a temporary solution proved unsatisfactory to the residents, a meeting was scheduled to gather feedback from the effected residents. Residents were allowed an opportunity to speak. Residents from eight addresses in this neighborhood spoke about their concerns. Difficulty accessing their driveways, littering, damage to parkways and a lack of street parking for residents and their visitors were the main concerns. The temporary solution of restricting parking to one side of the street was met with displeasure due to inconvenience for residents and a potential reduction in services provided by the Village, including garbage pickup, leaf pickup, street sweeping and snow plowing. Residents were mostly interested in varying degrees of residential parking only. Some residents preferred to allow all Niles residents to park on the street and others preferred to restrict parking to residents who live in the neighborhood to park on the street. Providing parking for vistors of the residents was discussed with various options. Item Two: Danette O’Donovan Matyas provided a summary of resident concerns about street parking in the area near Nordica, Jonquil and Dobson. There appears to be a situation where overflow parking from the multi-family home area on Nordica is ending up in this area. This has resulted in some residents requesting action from the Village. www.vniles.com Residents from nine homes spoke at the meeting. Some residents said they do not see any issues with street parking near their homes. Others, stated that there are issues ranging from a lack of space for residents to park their cars to the street being too narrow for traffic and emergency vehicles to drive down the street. The committee and residents acknowledged that the area most heavily impacted was nearest to the intersection of Jonquil and Nordica. Residents further away from this intersection are concerned that any parking restrictions near Jonquil and Nordica will just move the problems closer to their house and will not resolve the problem. Fred Braun read a summary of survey results from the residents of this area. There were not conclusive results from the survey other than the majority of concerns are from the residents nearest Nordica and Jonquil. The survey also showed a large number of vehicles owned by residents in the surveyed area. Chief McEnerney stated that cars parked without moving for three or more days are considered abandoned. These vehicles can be ticketed and/or towed. He also stated that it is difficult to know when cars have or have not moved without some assistance from the residents. Rich Wlodarski spoke about options that are being considered to create more parking for the multi- family homes. Some residents asked why King Spa will not allow residents to park in their lot. Rich explained that it is private property and the Village can’t force King Spa to allow resident parking. Rich also stated that the apartment building owners have allowed residents from the townhomes to use their lots on the North and South ends of the apartment buildings. He also stated that the Community Development Department has discussed creating small parking areas for the townhome residents. Adjournment A motion was made to adjourn and seconded. Aye – 4, Nay - 0