Carol Avenue Residents to Pelham Village Officials: Fix Overnight Parking

PELHAM, N.Y. – Several Carol Avenue homeowners came to the Pelham Village Board meeting Tuesday night to lash out at the trustees, saying they should be ashamed about an overnight parking issue on their street.

The dispute dates back to a December resolution authorized by the board of trustees that names Hillside and Brookside avenues as public streets. To avoid litigation from the Clovelly Homeowners Association, which was disputing the avenues were private streets, the board made an exception to the law and agreed to grant overnight parking permits to residents of that area.

However, residents on the east side of Carol Avenue were not granted the parking permits and have now been issued warnings from the Pelham Police Department that they are violating the local overnight parking law.

Carol Avenue resident Kathy Mattesi, a member of the Carol Avenue Association, first spoke during the Tuesday’s meeting and said she has been given three notices from the police department.

She was told in one of the warnings that the only way she can park overnight is by acquiring a HOPE (Hardship Overnight Parking Exemption) permit.

"So I inquired about the HOPE permit and the HOPE permit states that if we have a driveway, we cannot park overnight, but we need a handicap sticker,” said Mattesi. “A lot of the people that I’m talking about have the handicap stickers, but don’t qualify for the HOPE because we have a driveway.”

The 17-year Carol Avenue resident presented the board with a petition, signed by 20 of her neighbors, asking them to give 24/7 parking permits to the east side residents of Carol Avenue as well.

Four other Pelham residents came to voice their disappointment to the board. Currently, there is a freeze on issuing tickets for overnight parking in the area until June.

Trustee Geoff Lewis, who was filling in for Mayor Ed Hotchkiss while he was away on business, said he does not know “what the next step is yet.”

“I think we heard from the community tonight obviously that they’re not happy with this – the residents living there” he said. “We have to as a board talk about what our response to that is. I can’t even conjecture what we’re going to do at this point. We heard the community and they’re very upset about this, so we listen to that.”

Board members said they will be discussing the issue further at their May 22 meeting. 

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