The problem: A handicapped permit holder blocks off additional spaces on a Central Park Heights street.
The back story: There's a perennial Baltimore debate that resumes any time a significant amount of snow falls: Should drivers block parking spaces they have cleared on city streets with folding chairs or traffic cones when they leave so they can park there when they return?
Regardless of where you stand in winter, Watchdog believes that the defense of space-saving has no standing when temperatures swing in the opposite direction.
But Gwen Jones-Wise encounters a space-saver every time she visits a relative in the 3600 block of Manchester Ave.
Parking is restricted to one side of that narrow one-way street in Central Park Heights, and one space is reserved for a disabled resident.
However, the resident uses about a dozen orange and white barriers to prevent neighbors from parking in two other spaces adjacent to the reserved one, Jones-Wise said.
She doesn't challenge his right to one space — an area demarcated on either end by official city reserved-parking signs — but she objects to the other two.
"I don't think anybody has the right to cone off three spaces when you're only entitled to one," she said.
Jones-Wise first e-mailed the mayor's office in 2009, and she was referred to the Baltimore Parking Authority, which oversees the reserved handicapped space program.
The manager, Michelle Thompson, said she also has received anonymous complaints from area neighbors, but has never seen the barriers when she has gone out to investigate.
"Manchester [Avenue] is very small, and the neighbors should not have to put up with that," she said.
In Baltimore, residents are not allowed to reserve on-street parking spaces with cones or other objects — but authorities often look the other way after large snowfalls, such as the storms in February.
Applicants to the Reserved Residential Handicap Parking Permit Program are entitled to one 21-foot space, Thompson said. "He can't have the rest."
The Parking Authority manager said she planned to go to the space-saver's home once again to explain the situation, and assured Watchdog last week that the cones would be removed.
If the man doesn't comply, he risks losing the handicapped space altogether, Thompson said.
The residential handicap parking program is designed "to help the disabled community, not hinder the whole community," she said.
But with only two people staffing the program, it relies on residents to report potential violations, Thompson said.
"We do depend on the community to assure that spaces aren't abused," she said.
Who can fix this: Michelle Thompson, reserved residential handicap parking manager, Baltimore Parking Authority. 443-573-2823. City residents should call 311 to report problems.
—Liz F. Kay
Need Help?
Is there something in your neighborhood that's not getting fixed? Tell us where the problem is and how long it's been there by e-mailing watchdog@baltsun.com or calling 410-332-6735.