City Council

City of Salem, Massachusetts “Know Your Rights Under the Open Meeting Law, M.G.L. c. 30A ss. 18-25 and City Ordinance Sections 2-2028 through 2-2033.” The City Council Committee on __Ordinances, Licenses and Legal Affairs co-posted with Committee of the Whole_ met in the Council Chamber on ____Monday, April 6, 2026_______ at _6:00_____P.M. for the purpose of discussing the matters(s) listed below. Notice of this meeting was posted on ______April 2, 2026_________________ at ___ 5:20 P.M.______________________________________________ (This meeting is being recorded) ATTENDANCE OLLA – Varela (chair), Holappa, Prosniewski, Smith, Hapworth. COW – Merkl, King, Flynn, Sydoriak, Turowski, Davis. City – David Kucharski, Director of Transportation. ABSENT WERE: None. SUBJECT(S) #466 of 2025 – An Ordinance to amend an Ordinance relative to Traffic Ch. 42, Sec. 75A – Resident Sticker for the month of October (Fall Resident Parking) #139 of 2026 - An Ordinance to amend an Ordinance relative to Traffic Ch. 42, Sec. 75A – Temporary Resident Parking September 15th – November 1st (already been adopted for first passage) #148 of 2026 – Meet to discuss the implementation of Resident Sticker Visitor Passes. Varela – Starting with #466 – Resident Sticker Parking. Kucharski – I was not aware that this ordinance was done last fall so I recommended #139 and I have met with the mayor and the traffic commission regarding the same. These proposed ordinances overlap. Prosniewski – Maybe we should talk about #139 first and come back to #466. Recess to get zoom working… Hapworth – Is #139 an update for #466 and it does the same thing, correct? Kucharski – We were thinking slightly different dates instead of the 3rd week in September, we thought September 15th would be clearer for signage and the rooftop parking doesn’t change because we didn’t recommend changing it. Hapworth – Motion to discharge #466 because it does virtually the same thing as #139. Smith – The rooftop parking is in #466, so do we need to keep #466 because that is not part of #139? Hapworth – We can add anything to #139 that you would like to so if it was in #466, we can add it to #139. Seconded by Prosniewski. Motion carries 5-0. Kucharski – I submitted a redlined copy which removes the word “October” and replaces it with “Temporary”. Also, instead of starting on October 1st it will start on September 15th. In Section C we added an additional address at 13 Hawthorne Blvd for rooftop parking due to their planning board requirements. We did not change the timeframe for the rooftop parking. It is during October only. Holappa – Questions about the resident parking overview in general. Can you give us a 30 second overview of the program on what it is and what it entails from the city’s operation side? Kucharski – It is a resident program that has been in place since the 1990s and there are currently 108 streets that are designated as resident parking only out of 600 which is about 14%. That is the annual parking; it does not include October. They were originally based on the ward boundaries, so we have been working with the council to make those areas more neighborhood related. We have worked on increasing the fees to cover the cost of the new technology for the online registration. The new technology will allow us to check streets faster. Holappa – Are we covering our costs for signs etc.? I want everyone to be cognizant of those affected by tourists. Is this program working the way we want it to? Kucharski – We have staff that are going out and checking the streets. We try our best to cover the cost. October is another story, since we don’t charge the residents for temporary parking. I don’t have the specifics on costs, but I can get it for you if needed. Hapworth – Can you talk through the discretion of the department for those that are working downtown but not a Salem resident, so they don’t have to pay the October tourist costs? Kucharski – We have the Skipper and we have been giving residents and city employee free blue bikes. If there is a business that is on a street designated for October parking, we give those employees a parking permit for that time. We offer free parking for those healthcare workers during that time as well. Smith – None of these streets have resident parking, correct? There are some streets that are included that aren’t wide enough to park on so why are they on this list? Kucharski – There are some streets that there is no available parking, so we allow the residents to park on any street that is in the area. We have been looking at this since 2019-2020. We worked with the commission to go through them street by street to see where people are parking and where there isn’t any parking or not enough. A temporary October parking permit allows the resident to park anywhere in the zone designated as such. Smith – Is there anyone in the parking system that is in both regular zone parking permit and October temporary parking? Kucharski – If you have a resident permit, you will be able to park anywhere in that zone, but we don’t ticket a resident that has a parking permit that is parked in a different zone. Eventually, we do want to discuss those in another zone that park in a different zone. We aren’t encouraging the behavior, but we don’t want to ticket someone that has a parking permit. We are not trying to ticket residents. We have increased the fines. There is more compliance. We are trying to encourage tourists to not come by car. The police and parking enforcement are seeing less tickets and less towing. Smith- That is because the number of tickets has gone down and there is more compliance. King – Do you have any towing data from last October? Kucharski – In 2024, we towed 237 vehicles, but I don’t have last year’s in front of me. That includes October and year-round parking. King – Can you tell me about the strategy to let everyone know that October temporary parking is going into effect? Kucharski – We have auto renewal for those that have registered for October parking in the past. We put up flyers and signs. The new system has helped us to reach more people via email. If we change the date to September 15th, then we will meet with DPS to get the signs up in the beginning of September instead of the end of the month. Merkl – I appreciate the info and the focus on notification. I think getting the word out for folks to not drive in seems to be working. Is the auto renewal for the annual parking and the October parking? Kucharski – For a year-round parking permit, we send out a notice because there is a fee, but the October parking is free so that is automatically renewed. We want to be able to communicate with more people so we are encouraging everyone to register online so they have a profile, and we can communicate better with them. We are also looking into other ways we can use the Passport system for things like street sweeping. Having the automatic October renewals and the new system has really helped the staff during a very busy time of the year. Sydoriak – For those that are not automatically renewed, what is the fallout for that? Kucharski – We will ticket those people that haven’t renewed, but if they reach out to us and get registered then we will rescind the ticket. Turowski – What company are you working with for equipment? Before the new system, we had roughly the same amount of October resident passes issued as visitor passes. Is that about the same under the new system? I think the biggest pain point that we are hearing is with getting visitors registered correctly. Kucharski – Passport works with Genetech. It is not Flock Safety that has been in the news lately. There were less visitor passes issued last year. The price increase may have made lowered the number of visitors passes. King – We stopped buying visitor passes because you must track the license. Holappa – Why don’t we designate all the parking in these areas as year-round resident parking instead of just in October? It seems it would make everything easier. People are worried about the new developments that don’t have enough off-street parking, and the people will just park on these nonresident streets instead. Varela – During Oct., it restricts streets that don’t have regular resident parking, and it could be difficult for those businesses during other times of the year. Smith – Year-round resident parking that is daytime only particularly on Warren St from Flint St to Essex St, can that be added to this ordinance? Can we extend the garage rooftop parking to September 15th because I have gotten feedback from residents that there isn’t any parking during the food truck festival at the end of September. Kucharski – For Warren St, I would have to look at some data to see if it should be added. As far as the roof, we haven’t seen full use of the rooftop parking in the past. At no time did we see more than 30-35 vehicles. It is costing revenue to the city. The resident will buy the parking spot for insurance to get parking, but the resident will go into the garage and park at the first spot that they find and that leaves the roof parking empty. King – Are tourist parking as far out of downtown as to Hancock and Gardner streets? Kucharski – Yes, we did a study and found that they were. When we revised the streets last year, we heard from the councilors at the time that parking on those streets was an issue in October. King – Are you open to keep the date Oct 1st for the streets that are further out and the other streets start on Sept 15th? Kucharski – It is doable, but it would be more difficult and time consuming to get the word out and the different signs posted. Hapworth – The list in front of us has been refined by the transportation dept and the ward councilors over many years so if you think there is a street that should be added or removed, we can look into that. Generally, those that have year-round resident parking probably would not want it, but it has become a necessity. Public Comment – Laffy – Auto renewal – are we giving thought to who we are automatically renewing? Are we renewing those that have moved out of the city and then they can come back and park for free. The other comment is the cost of the October parking is fully subsidized partly by the year-round resident parking and partly by the city. So, the $30,000 that it costs for the temporary parking is fully subsidized. Whittier – There was a suggestion that those in resident parking zone wouldn’t want it, that is the opposite of what I have heard. Back to Discussion – Varela – Does anyone want to amend the document? This has already passed for first passage so we will be checking on second passage. Smith – Can we revise this in 3 or 4 weeks? I am asking about Warren St and the rooftop parking? Kucharski – We can add Warren St by an order separately. The more time I have to get the signs ordered and up the better. We aren’t seeing the demand for the rooftop parking in October, so we will not be pursuing an extension at this time. Hapworth – It would be best to have this as locked by Thursday but if there is anything that a councilor would like to add, we can add it on the floor on Thursday before the vote or we can re-visit it and add something in the future. Motion to refer to full council for second and final passage. Seconded by Prosniewski. Motion carries 5-0. Varela – Moving on to resident sticker visitor passes #148 Prosniewski – I have a lot of concerns about the new visitor pass system, since you can only register them online instead of the old placard system. The new system is with the license plate readers. There have been a lot of complaints that the visitor pass system is not working. In the old system, the resident got a resident sticker for parking, and they could get up to 2 visitor placards to put on their visiting cars. For the new system to work, the resident must register each visitor. There have been times that someone drops in for a few minutes and didn’t register their car, so they got ticketed. It is not easy to register visitors on the new system. It was so much easier when we had placards to give a visitor. There is a resident that is having work done on her house and she called the city and they told her she needed to buy visitor passes at $15/per day per contractor and she did the math that will cost more than $9600 for the contractors to park on her street. My own personal experience happened one day when my son stopped by to help me with something in the driveway. He parked in front of my driveway, and someone came by and ticketed him. He didn’t say anything to us which is bad customer service. I think that most of the visitors that are getting ticketed, it’s the resident that is paying the ticket or calling the city to request that it be rescinded. Is there any data on who is paying the tickets as far as residents vs non-residents? The system that we have now is very difficult to work with and I think that we could combine the old with the new to make it work better. Varela – I understand that we must modernize how we do things in the city. There is some fallout with that, and we need to discuss some flexibility with this program. Hapworth – I appreciate the comments about potentially combining the systems. About 5 years ago, we had many discussions about enforcement because we have people out there enforcing, but not enough people to cover the whole city, so that is how we got a new system. We also had discussions about the guest passes and the abuses of the guest passes. I don’t think we really changed the ordinance much so could write a change to the ordinance and state exactly how we want this handled. This originally came to us as a funding request for the license plate reader. I think enforcement is better. The visitor pass has been difficult and that is where we are getting the most complaints. I am sure it is easier for the Dept of Transportation and people aren’t parking as much illegally. It was logical to move to this new system. Having to register a car every time someone stops at my house is difficult. A combined system will add time to the enforcement personnel’s day, and it will add costs to buy and issue the placards, but I think that is a reasonable place to drive this conversation. Smith – Do you know what it cost for the license plate readers program versus the old program? Can we do a hybrid system? Kucharski – Old system it was about $240k and the new is $269k. Includes staff time. If the car pings, then the person must get out of their car to issue the ticket anyway but with a hybrid they would have to check every vehicle on the street to see if they have a placard and that would take more time. There would be a cost for the placards and mailings or staff time to get the placards to resident. It is not a perfect system but for the resident that is having work done on their house, there are things that we can do. If everyone on the street wants to allow the contractors to park there, then we can accommodate that for residents. We looked into doing a hybrid system and no one else does that because it has the added time and cost. It is possible but it would be like a step backwards in my opinion. Smith – Were there instances of fraud with the old placard system where someone would pay for the visitor placard and then sell it to someone for more money. Kucharski – Yes there was but I don’t have any data on how much or how often that happened. There are short comings with the physical placards as well as the card reader system, but we feel that the new system works better for enforcement. Neither system is perfect though. King – We are trying to find a solution to the construction issue. I think the neighbor with the construction project has an issue with $15 per day, per vehicle and not that they must pay extra for a contractor to park there for several months to work on her house. I think she was thinking maybe $30 per year per vehicle or something like that. With the Passport parking app, I’m curious how much flexibility you have on the back end to modify it. I have 2 suggestions. I know that right now we don’t have auto renewal for the resident annual parking, but can we add a check box to add yourself to auto renewal for the annual? The other suggestion that I received is once you add the visitor license plate to the system, can you have a feature that saves the license plate number? Currently when you put a new plate in, it erases the old plate. So, if you have kids visiting you, you must enter each plate again each time they visit. Is there a way to save license plates for future use? Also, can you explain the logic behind the $15 per day, per vehicle for contractors? Also visiting nurses can get a separate pass from the city. Can you explain those processes? Kucharski – The $15 per day for contractors started mainly for contractors working downtown because it would require us to bag metered spaces and that is the typical rate for someone to park downtown all day. Then we used the same rate that was used outside of downtown. It was typical used for someone working for a few days at most and we haven’t gotten a lot of push back on that in the past. As for the caregiver, when we moved to this new system, if we hear from a resident or a homecare company, we put all the plates in the system. King – Is that an extra visitor pass – an override? Kucharski – Yes, it is an override. King – Can we talk about changing the radius for the contractors, since it was originally meant to be just downtown? Kucharski – I can look into that and see how often we get requests from residents and where those are happening and get back to you on it. For the auto renew, that would need to have a credit card on file so I can check with Passport on it. One of the complaints that we are getting is that we are asking for too much information so we don’t save any info in the system, but I can check to see if we can change that. King – It would be helpful to have more training options for the residents. Self-service guide on the website would be helpful. Varela – Is there the opportunity for someone to call the office so they can walk them through the process of registering a vehicle? Kucharski – We do that all the time. Turowski – Is there a way to put something over the license plate so the reader can read a visitor placard instead of the license plate? Like a magnet or something? Kucharski – I don’t think that is legal. Holappa – I don’t think we would need something to cover the license plate but maybe the reader could read two things and pick up the visitor pass. What is the difference in revenue from the old program and new? Kucharski – It was estimated at about $100,000 more in revenue but the program will still run as a deficit. Holappa – Where does that deficit money come from in the budget? Who is paying for it? Kucharski – I would say the general population is paying for it. Any money that comes from parking goes back to the general fund. It does not come back to our department. Davis – Since implementing the new system, do you know the revenue? Kucharski – We aren’t issuing more tickets, but those tickets were never part of the revenue. We are basing getting our money back from writing tickets because we want compliance. Tickets were not part of the comparison. I can get info on what we made on the current system, but it would take some time. Merkl – Any change to a new system is always challenging. The visitor parking permit is only used by about 14% of residents and 29% in October. There are many residents that don’t have access to visitor parking. Running two systems seems really impractical. I really appreciate the focus on problem solving. The councilors are looking at the needs of each street in their neighborhood. It might be helpful to focus on customer service & assistance. Is the new system getting better? Are there less inquiries, etc.? Kucharski – My staff seems to think that people are getting used to it. The point of this is to be better at enforcement. The residents are getting home and able to park near their house. That is the purpose of this program. To help residents park near their house. I understand the technical challenges, but I would like to know if this is working better for the residents. Are they able to park in their neighborhood? King – You said that there are roughly 108 streets for full year resident parking. Ward 5 has about 1/3 of those streets that are in the program, so it is taking the brunt of this annual resident parking area. Kucharski – Yes, because of the size of the neighborhood and the University. We have added and remove streets and a lot of the streets that we removed were in that ward based on what the residents are telling us about their need to be in this program or not. King – Most residents that I talk to think the program is a burden. The enrollment at the university is down about ½ in the last 10 years and they have built a lot more parking as well. I think that the people that have moved there more recently don’t understand the need for it because they weren’t around when there were more students. In order to remove a street from the program, we did a survey with the residents, correct? Kucharski – We have worked with ward councilors in the past to check on whether a street should be added or removed. We have looked at any street that had less than 20% participation and we have worked with ward councilors to send out surveys to target certain areas to see if a street needed to be added or removed. King – I think I would like to have a separate conversation with you about the Salem State neighborhood. We do a separate placard for teachers at Saltonstall for October parking, correct? Kucharski – I think the school may give those out to the teachers but the enforcement in that neighborhood doesn’t start until 5pm. Varela – You can request to change the parking in your ward, and it would be up to the will of the body to decide to move forward on that. And if it doesn’t work, then you can request to change it back. We did that downtown and it has worked out well. Turowski – Please excuse my previous suggestion to skirt the law. Maybe we could add a magnet pass on the back of the car instead of a placard that the plate reader could read but that would depend on the capabilities of the system. Kucharski – I can research that. Prosniewski – We are talking about the old system versus the new system. There are pros and cons for both, and I think we could take the pros from both systems and try to integrate them somehow. I think that we can use some of the new and old system to find something that will work. There is a reason that we have resident parking. Some people think that it is a privilege, but it is a burden because there is a system there because there is a parking problem. I appreciate that there can be downtown resident parking and resident parking outside of downtown. I take offense to your statement that the parking guy must get out of his car to look for the placard. I must spend my time to register the visitor, and I don’t get paid to do that, but the employee is on salary. So, who’s time is more valuable? I really think with this discussion that we can come up with a better process. Merkl – The main reason to have this system is for better enforcement so they can cover more ground, faster. King – You mentioned that you are willing to rescind tickets. Can you put something on the website that tells people that is an option? Kucharski – We can do that. King – Would you be willing to add the possibility of a 3rd visitor pass at a higher rate? Kucharski – I can bring it to the commission for a discussion. You can also add it tonight. King – I prefer getting feedback on it first. Smith – There are some residents that want to call the police to complain. Some people can’t handle that their neighbors don’t have the actual sign on the car so if we could somehow publish the numbers so people can see that the enforcement is better, I think that would help. I also don’t think that people downtown should pay more for parking, like for contractors, just because they are downtown. They put up with enough. Public Comment – Peg Harrigan – The system is cumbersome and difficult. It is not age-friendly, particularly for the visitor passes. It is an invasion of privacy. I think that a hybrid system is needed. I had a friend that would visit that I gave the placard and they didn’t have to put their info online. The enforcement is wildly inefficient and inconsistent. It is ridiculous that I need to go into two separate portals to set up resident and visitor parking. I won’t do it. For a city that calls themselves age friendly. I don’t want to do an online tutorial to learn how to register my guests online. This system is cumbersome and not friendly. We should go back to having visitor placards. Brendan Walsh – We are talking about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness and, efficiency and community service. I am insulted by the parking dept’s referring to neighbors sharing placards under the old system as abuse. That’s being neighborly. Contractors that do work often in Salem should be able to register their vehicles with the city, like the visiting nurses are doing or just give them a placard. Appeals are only online. We need a hybrid system with an annual appeal process that involves a magistrate. Laffy - Sharing placards is helpful and neighborly. Now I must put my neighbor’s visitor’s license plate into the system, which is ridiculous. I asked FOIA of the # of tickets that were given out during the summer months down at the Willows and they said there was only one ticket given out. I have taken pictures of cars lining the streets and even parking in front of fire hydrants. If this is a better system, then I hate to see what was worse. Kapantis – I requested information on the cost and revenues of this program, and they are including things that shouldn’t be included so look over the data that goes into those costs, etc. The system needs to work for everyone so some people, elderly, etc. should be able to get a placard. Arlander – Salem is supposed to be a city for all ages. The new system doesn’t work for older citizens. Senior should be allowed to get placards and not have to use the new system. A hybrid system would help. There are cars parked on Federal Street without being registered all the time and they aren’t ticketed. Some don’t even move during snowstorms. Pamela J – I agree with all the comments tonight. I didn’t know that I could park anywhere in my zone and not just on my street, but my area isn’t that safe, so I don’t want to have to park on another street. I don’t understand how the plate reader can read the plate when cars are so close together. And on the weekends, you have nobody to call to get help. Back to the discussion – Varela – This order is about the discussion and not an action for tonight. The parking system should be accommodating to all. I commend the Transportation Dept for trying to find a way to uphold enforcement. I think that the plate readers have made that more efficient. King – I have 3 ideas – First, minimize the problems for seniors - can we get a placard for disable and/or seniors that they would have to apply and qualify for? I think we should remove some of the streets, but I would like to know what the savings would be to remove them. I am not trying to get contractors to pay more just because they are downtown, but can we explore program for contractors to get a $30 per year pass? Hapworth – I think there is a will to discuss this more. So, I think we should leave this in committee. I don’t think that we are ready to make any decisions or changes on this yet. Smith – Have you looked at other types of readers like RFID reader? That puts an actual tag on the car like the runners in the marathon that you can look up and see their progress. It might solve the privacy issues. It is probably more expensive. Kucharski – We looked into what other towns are using but I can discuss it with the mayor. Sydoriak – Have you looked at other cities that are trying to tackle this issue? How did they move forward and how did it work. How can we accomplish our goals for enforcement. What are the limitations? Provide examples of other towns that are using this system. Prosniewski – I hope that when you bring this to the mayor, he will take a deep dive into this with residents on a task force with all ages, areas of town, etc. I think there are pros and cons on the system. I like the plate readers, but I think we need to combine the two to make it work better. Hapworth – Motion to leave it in committee. Seconded by Smith 5-0. On the motion of C. Hapworth the meeting adjourned at 8:31P.M. Andrew Varela mbc (Chairperson)