Politics & Government

Residents Blame Town, BOE for WHS Parking Woes

Parking forums discusses parking near the high school.

Residents near painted a picture of a neighborhood littered with condom wrappers, graffiti and speeding students during a forum on high school parking issues Wednesday night.

Residents used the often testy forum to tell town and school districts officials of the situation on the streets near Westfield High School, saying that their quality of life had gone down hill since student parking had spread to side streets. The forum was the first in a planned series to address parking issues near the high school.

“My husband has found an empty Jim Beam bottle, used condoms, soda cans, we have found kids getting high in their cars before school. We have small kids,” one Shadowlawn resident said. “On Shadowlawn and parts of Dorian it’s a free for all. My taxes are high and I don’t care to clean up liquor bottles and condom wrappers from my lawn.”

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Residents pegged the increase in parking and traffic issues with two decisions in the middle part of the last decade. They said the Board of Education’s decision to build the high school’s science wing over a parking lot and restrict the remaining lot to faculty and staff was half the issue. The other half was the town’s decision to restrict parking hours on several nearby streets in the event the parking deck had been built in 2004. The parking restrictions were done to prevent commuters from using the streets to make up for the lack of parking during deck construction.

“It is horrendous,” a Rahway and Shadowlawn resident said. “It is a Board of Education problem. They need to restrict parking to seniors. Everyone should not be entitled to drive to school. I go out to walk the dog with garbage bags in my hand.”

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“The bigger issue is the Board of Education needs to take responsibility for what they’ve done,” another resident said. “My street was not built to be a parking lot.”

Board of Education President Julia Walker and several BOE members in the audience remained silent during this portion of the meeting.

Trinity Place resident Jill Tozier said the high school’s decision to allow juniors and seniors to leave the school for lunch has caused issue. Tozier said she has seen students come and go from the high school during the entire school day and has seen students smoking on her lawn and littering her lawn.

Several residents joined Tozier in calling for either ending the open lunch or restricting it to seniors.

Residents said student driving habits are also a concern. They said they have found students speeding down residential streets and parking in a way that blocks intersections. One resident said his son has almost been hit by a car on multiple occasions when walking home from McKinley School and crossing Dorian and Scotch Plains.

“They are speeding, talking on phones, waving and honking to their friends, high fiving out of windows and someone mentioned someone on top of a car and that happened,” a Coding resident said.

Residents said the condition of the roads after this winter’s snow storms caused more problems with students. They said the sidewalks were not shoveled, forcing students to walk in the streets, along with piles of snow and parked cars causing roads to become one lane.

“This is a serious issue, someone is going to get killed,” a resident said. “The kids park on top of the snow, they park on top of the leaves. I am waiting for a car to burst into flames.”

Another resident agreed and said that may be when action is taken.

“One day someone will get severly hurt or killed and then something will get done,” he said.

Coding Road residents said the narrowness of their street has caused issues with parking on the road and k-turns. They said the increased student traffic on the road has caused residents to have their mailboxes run over on multiple occasions. One resident noted that the mailboxes are the size of a small child and said his children cannot leave chalk outside the house.

“I make sure every day that my kids don’t leave chalk outside,” he said. “We’ve come back and seen pictures of male organs, profanity and graffiti on signs. Thank God it’s chalk.”

Residents said that they would prefer to see more students walking to school or getting rides, but noted that the traffic around the high school from drop-offs have caused issue. One resident said that it takes her half an hour to drop her children off and leave the high school neighborhood daily. She said it is tough to make turns off of Trinity Place and Dorian Road.

Several residents proposed putting a circular driveway in front of the high school, similar to a plan implemented at Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School and help move school buses into there. Resident Mike Nemeth said he has gotten stuck behind buses unloading equipment and parked cars and buses limit Dorian Road to one lane. Stoneleigh Park resident Diane Barabas reiterated calls to direct certain high school traffic off of Dorian to the back parking lot.

In terms of student parking, one resident said some parents are trying to stimulate the economy via parking.

“There was a doctor in town who stuck flyers in our doors and on our cars asking if his daughter could park in our driveway and he was willing to pay for it,” she said. “I was offended by that.”

Several Town Council members in attendance, along with four BOE members, high school principal Peter Renwick and Gordon Meth, the town’s traffic consultant, said they were taken the input from the meeting and will use it to develop preliminary plans with regards to traffic near the high school. Meth said he was taking the input, which included restricting street parking to residents, limiting who can drive to school, a high school parking deck, parking at the Armory and Memorial Pool and increased police presence in the neighborhood and develop a preliminary plan.

Several residents said that parking at the pool could be implemented in the fall and a shuttle bus could be used to transport students back to WHS.

Meth said several data studies will be conducted in the spring and fall to determine traffic patterns and another meeting will be planned for later this spring. He said a meeting will also be held in the fall to discuss ideas. Meth stressed that no final plan will be determined for several months.

Councilmembers Joann Neylan and Keith Loughlin said parking at the Armory could be back on the table. The Board of Education last summer after the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs provided too high a figure for renting the lot. Neylan and Loughlin said that Mayor Andy Skibitsky has developed a working relationship with state military officials and has discussed the possibility with them. Neither gave a time frame for this possibility or addressed the monetary aspect.

Several residents did say that if the Armory was used, they’d want to restrict how to enter and exit the lot, and not utilize Coding for this. Meth said he did not know if this was possible and also noted that residents may need to sacrifice no matter what the final plan was. Audience members expressed anger, saying they have been sacrificing with the parking issue.

Walker and Renwick stressed that the school system teaches manners to students and to be respectful to residents of the high school neighborhood. Walker noted that the high school has staff dedicated to working on parking enforcement. Residents said they have only seen the parking staff right near WHS and not farther out. The staffers also enforce faculty/staff only parking on the high school grounds.

Renwick said he would look into the littering, graffiti, car surfing and pot smoking issues and see what could be done. Walker said one possibility was teaching respect issues in the high school’s driver’s education classes, which residents said would not address the immediate concerns.

“We will work with you when we can,” Renwick said. “It bothers me to hear that our students are being disrespectful.”

Meth proposed providing more bicycle parking at the high school, which prompted debate among the residents.

“If you thought a high school student would ride a bike to school, I’d love to see that,” one resident said.

Several residents said it is unsafe to bike in town due to the drivers. Neylan said she was concerned about the bike plan noting that students are carrying heavy backpacks and instruments. One resident said this should not be a concern, noting biking is a popular form of commuting in other countries.

“Look at China,” he said. “This is something we can do.”

Editor’s Note: Attached to this article are three videos from the meeting, including a 10 minute video of audience debate with town and school officials.


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