The Milford Borough Council on May 11 limited parking on the east side of Mott Street on Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Sept. 15 from dawn until dusk.
The motion carried with only Council Vice President Adriane Wendell opposing the motion.
Councilman Joe Dooley said he had gone down there and there were two trucks parked opposite each other and said you couldn’t get a full-sized car through the gap, meaning it would be impossible to get either a fire truck or an ambulance through.
Mott Street resident David Weinberg said the parking issue that plagued Mott Street last year was due to the closing of Milford Beach, which had never happened before in the 11 years that he lived there.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a regular occurrence,” he said. “And even then, we only had high traffic for three weekends in August. So, it’s really overkill. To remove parking from one side of the street from May until September doesn’t solve your issue of public safety at all. It just really deals with diverting tourists away from the borough.”
Weinberg also said the big trucks only come down Mott Street during the week.
“You’ve got Waste Management, our garbage truck; you’ve got our borough truck that comes down the street three times a day,” Weinberg said. “But during the weekend, there are no trucks here at all. There are just cars from people from the Bronx, at least last August, there were.”
Dooley and Mayor Sean Strub expressed concern about the ability to get a fire truck or an ambulance through if cars are parked on both side of Mott Street.
“The banks getting down to that nice, beautiful pool that I swam in last year are tough,” Dooley said. “I hate to see somebody slip and fall down that bank and crack their head and we can’t get an ambulance down that street because cars are parked on both sides.”
Weinberg’s wife, Nancy, said if parking is banned in front of her house, it’s rude to ask her company to park in front of her neighbor’s house.
“That’s my point,” David Weinberg said. “It’s two or three weekends per year, where it gets nuts. That is my point. It’s three weekends per year, where if the beach just closed, it could get nuts here, and I think this is overkill.”