A car left on South Street during the storm. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
For the second time this year, a snowstorm that plopped about a foot of snow on Red BankWednesday and early Thursday came with a blizzard of parking tickets.
Police issued 260 parking violations during the storm, tying a one-day record set during a January 4 storm, police Chief Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen.
A number of cars remained parked during the storm along Branch Avenue in front of two apartment complexes. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
The aim of the ticket blitz was to drive home a message that, under a 2017 law change, vehicles must be off all borough streets during and immediately after snowstorms to allow for plowing, McConnell said in January. Previously, the no-parking mandate applied to a limited number of streets considered essential for emergency service.
So are residents not getting the message?
“I don’t know what the issue is,” McConnell told redbankgreen on Thursday. “It would be helpful if more people signed up for the borough alerts through our website and/or Nixle alerts. That way they have the info available to them immediately.”
The borough’s messaging encouraged residents who don’t have access to off-street private parking to leave their vehicles in town parking lots at no charge.
The January blitz generated about two and a half times the number of $38 citations written in comparable past storms, McConnell said at the time.
With electronic technology, patrol officers need not get out of their cars to write tickets, and the owners of ticketed vehicles receive the violation notices in the mail several days later.
