Jonah Schulte

I brought my kids here to play and found this mess in the parking lot at Starr Farm Park.

There is a city tree in front of this address with a low hanging branch extending above the parking area. I’m happy to trim it, but as it appears to be on city property I thought I should put in a request here. It scrapes the roof of my van when I drive under it, especially when the tree is wet. There’s another large branch extending toward the front of the house that could also stand to be trimmed back a bit.

I fully understand that water main rehabilitation or replacement is necessary from time to time, and I greatly appreciate that myself and fellow taxpayers chose to have this important work done in recent years.

However, I am somewhat confused about how it is a better use of taxpayer money to spend weeks or months having what appear to be a contracted company driving at least a dozen or more large vehicles including semi trucks down to our area from Quebec / Canada and painstakingly cleaning (or something??) the water mains in the neighborhood.

Would it not be faster and less expensive to dig up the road and put in a new water main and then repave? Excuse me if this is naive, I honestly don’t know the costs involved, but common sense tells me that what’s happening in these pictures must be costing us a fortune.

And also the taxpayer money could be spent creating local jobs instead of sending the money out of the country?

Thanks for any insight you can offer on this concern.

Today, as is a usual occurrence, a parking enforcement officer was issuing $75 parking tickets to parents trying to safely pick up their children from Integrated Arts Academy. These parents were unfortunately parked in No Parking zones which were not clearly marked. However, in order to issue these parking tickets, the officer parked illegally in a No Parking zone to do so. Please issue the officer in the attached photograph (in the comments section) a $75 parking ticket for this infraction, as none of us should be above the law. The law states the following:

Fifteen-minute parking.
(a) No person shall park a vehicle longer than fifteen (15) minutes, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., Sundays and holidays excepted, in the following areas:

(98) In the parking space on the east side of Walnut Street, next northerly of Archibald Street.

The Subaru in the left half of the attached picture is in the ONE 15 minute parking spot next northerly of Archibald Street. The parking enforcement vehicle is parked in a "No Parking Here To Corner" zone.

On a regular basis I see parents dropping their children off at Integrated Arts Academy and unwittingly parking along the west side of Walnut Street, north of IAA. This is a No Parking zone but that is not obvious to many people.

There is one No Parking sign just outside the school, but it's on a sign post with two other signs and isn't particularly obvious (especially in all the commotion of pick-up and drop-off times). The only other No Parking sign is 300 feet north of it, at the intersection of Walnut and Willow. If you park between these two signs, you're 150 feet away from either one of them and it's very easy to overlook the signage. In Burlington, it seems that a lack of No Parking signs is an indicator that parking is free and allowed in a given area. I recently made the mistake of parking between the two signs on Walnut and received a $75 ticket. I contested the ticket and the City Attorney's office agreed that the ticket was improperly issued because of the inadequate signage, and dismissed the ticket.

It seems that more No Parking signs along the west side of Walnut Street would be helpful to resolve this. It helps parking authority by giving them an airtight case when handing out legitimate tickets, and provides those who are looking for a parking spot helpful guidance on where they can park legally and to avoid unnecessary fines.

Work was done earlier in the year to install additional No Parking signs along the west side of Spring Street between Manhattan Drive and Elmwood for the exact same reason, and the new signage there has been extremely effective in curbing illegal parking. Please consider adding additional No Parking signage along Walnut Street as well.

Thank you!