Toss overnight parking in a Dumpster, please

Useless law should finally be scrapped

It is great to see the city of Glens Falls finally examining the ban on overnight parking and taking a slow and halting step toward lifting it.

Someone — I won’t say who — has been loudly and publicly begging for 30 years for this senseless law to be fed into the shredder.

My grievance with the overnight parking ban runs deep. But rather than whining about the past, I’d like to look to a beautiful future in which the city’s residents are allowed to park in front of their own houses.

The shrugs from city officials that have greeted my historical rants about the law have made me suspect they were motivated by money — that the city was profiting from forgetful residents who neglected to move their cars into the driveway at night.

Also, perhaps, the parking ban gives city cops something to do during the quiet chilly hours between 2 and 6 a.m..

And, most of all, the law is there, and who is going to take on the hassle of changing it? The strongest force in the universe is bureaucratic inertia.

Now, city officials are running a test program of permitted overnight parking on certain streets near downtown.

I’d call this a half-measure, except, measure-wise, it’s more like a 1/16th.

It’s nice they’re addressing the lack of parking for people who live in apartments downtown. We want downtown to thrive, and those people need to be able to park.

But what about the vast majority of city residents who live outside downtown?

If you live in the city’s neighborhoods, as I have for 30 years, and you occasionally have visitors or teens with their own cars or a short driveway or one that gets pummeled by snow and ice sliding off your roof, then you’re familiar with the city’s rule that forbids parking for that stretch in the small hours of morning.

The city has no explanation for this law (I’m ignoring the nonsensical “Muggers can hide between parked cars” argument.)

The law just is, and it has just been accepted as is by generations of police chiefs and mayors and common councils.

Arguments can be made for banning overnight parking in the winter, when plows are out. But plowing takes place during the day as well, and residents know to move their cars off the street during snowstorms. Snow emergency notifications can be sent out, and if certain people block the smooth progress of the plows with their cars, tickets can be issued, whatever time of day it is.

But otherwise, the city’s ban targets the time when streets are the quietest and parked cars create the least hassle and pose the least danger.

The city’s real problems with parking manifest during the day. Try driving down South Street between Hudson and Murray between 9 a.m and 5 p.m, when parked cars turn the narrow roadway into a hair-raising gauntlet. 

Try driving past Poopie’s on Lawrence Street around lunchtime, and you will find a two-way street transformed into a one-way alley.

But take a late-night drive wherever you like in the city and you’ll find traffic nonexistent. Parked cars aren’t a problem, because no one is on the roads.

Hurray for the effort to encourage downtown residency!

But don’t the people who live in the neighborhoods deserve consideration too? Why oh why can’t we park in front of our own houses?

Readings

I read “Stay Sharp” by Sanjay Gupta, the brain surgeon and CNN contributor, which addresses misconceptions and makes recommendations about how to stay mentally fit as you age. I’m not a big reader of self-help books, but Gupta’s upbeat writing style, coupled with his personal and professional expertise on brain health, made this book a fun and informative read. A couple of things jumped out. Research has found that socializing with other people is just as important to brain health, or more so, as diet and exercise. This illuminates all the talk of mental health trouble caused by the isolating effects of the pandemic and may even shed light on the insanity of the Jan. 6 attack. Also, caregivers for people with dementia — I am one — are at far higher risk of developing dementia themselves, because of the stress and isolation frequently caused by the disease. This was a warning to me to be “selfish” sometimes and insist on doing at least a couple of things, like writing and working out, that give me satisfaction. Otherwise, if my own health deteriorates, how can I take care of my wife?