Town ordinances say overnight on-street parking isn't allowed, and cars found parked on town roads between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. will be ticketed. The town has allowed residents to leave their car on the road for a night without getting ticketed if they call police beforehand.
To address both residents' need to occasionally park on the street and frequent calls to the public safety dispatch service, the town has rolled out a separate webpage for residents to request temporary overnight on-street parking.
"If you park on the side of the road between 2 and 5 a.m., you'll wind up getting a ticket," Larry Niland, the West Hartford Police Department's IT specialist, said. "What this does is, if you call us, or now if you use the system, you will get an 'omit' up to three nights where you can park on the street, we're exempting you from getting a ticket at that point."
Niland said the new system benefits both residents and public safety dispatch, who last year received 18,000 calls from residents specifically seeking overnight parking.
The town's chief information officer, Jared Morin, agreed: "[Dispatchers] receive so many calls just for parking and it really distracts from everyday work and what they need to focus on, that's where we got the idea."
It started as a request from a retired police sergeant, Morin said, as their dispatch center received an increased number of calls for overnight parking.
Morin said town and police information technology staff have worked the last three years with a tech company originally named Civica, which was based in southern Californiabefore it was acquired by the Denver-based company Granicus. The project cost $18,000 over the three-year period, Morin said.
Niland said police and public safety dispatchers have been testing the system internally the last month. "We tested it out first to make sure it doesn't flop when it rolls out."
"Hopefully, this is something easy for the public to use," Niland said. "It's a win all the way around."
The request form is available on the town's website, www.westhartfordct.gov, on the police department's web page, found in the government tab under public safety. Users are required to create an account, and after they reach a seven-day request limit per month, have to call dispatch to seek more on-street overnight parking.
Currently, there's a seven-night maximum for each month, and beyond that, residents must call the police department and explain why they need overnight parking for additional time. The seven-nights-per-month maximum is still being evaluated, Niland said, and is subject to change.
Police will have direct access to the system in cruisers to see if an overnight-parked car has a valid omit before a ticket is issued, according to a press release from the police department.
©2016 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
