By Cary Shuman
The City Council met with Police Sgt. Joe Gaff and Director of Parking Chad Luongo Feb. 11 in the Council Chambers to discuss parking issues and the increased number of vehicles on Everett streets.
Councilors-at-Large Stephanie Smith and Michael Marchese had called for the special meeting during which councilors asked questions on a variety of parking-related topics.
“I think we can all agree that parking, traffic, and trash are some of the top three complaints that we get from our constituents,” began Smith. “I wanted to give the Traffic Commission the opportunity to give us an update, tell us what they’re working on, and we can ask questions of them.”
Luongo told the Council in his opening remarks that in 2024 there were 65,871 parking tickets issued, of which 25,448 were for resident violations, “an increase of 49 percent in resident violations from 2023.”
Sgt. Gaff announces subcommittee
Gaff announced at the meeting the formation of a resident sticker/parking subcommittee that would consist of four members of the Traffic Commission, two members of the City Council (Gaff suggested the members be selected by Council President Stephanie Martins), Deputy Fire Chief Will Hurley, and individual representatives from the engineering, code enforcement, legal, and transportation departments. The committee will begin meeting in March, with the goal of presenting a plan for parking changes by the end of October.
“It’s going to be a major task, but I think we can do it,” said Gaff, adding that community meetings will be held during the fact-gathering process.
“The [Mayor Carlo DeMaria] Administration asked us to please make sure that we get some input from the community, that it was very important to do that,” said Gaff.
Councilors’ parking concerns
Following are some of the concerns raised by the individual councillors and the thorough responses by Sgt. Gaff and Mr. Luongo:
Councillor-at-Large Stephanie Smith
Smith said that vehicular parking in Everett is an issue that is “near and dear to my heart.” Smith regularly attends Traffic Commission meetings and clearly appeared to be well-versed in all parking and traffic issues in Everett. For example, Luongo confirmed that Smith’s estimate on the number of parking enforcement officer-related tickets versus residential calls to the department (75 per cent versus 25 percent) to be on the mark.
Smith asked whether police on directed patrols give parking tickets on “blatant violations” such as “no parking from here to the corner” situations.
“We talk about this all the time at roll calls,” said Gaff. “Chief Mazzie did it, and now Chief Strong is making sure we do it at roll call – making sure we hit the corner lots, hydrants, bus stops, and the crosswalks.”
Smith asked if there is a need for additional parking enforcement officers in the city.
“We’re working very closely with the Administration during this budget process and we’re having conversations about that,” responded Gaff. “We want to look at more data.”
Smith asked whether residents, by ordinance, are required to move their vehicles from parking spaces every 72 hours (three days).
“How do we enforce that?” inquired Smith.
Gaff said police would investigate such situations (multi-day parking in one spot). Added Luongo, “If we see a car there for a while, we’ll put a flyer on the vehicle saying that we’ve noticed that your vehicle hasn’t been moved in a while. They get the point, and they move it.”
Following the meeting, Smith said that parking continues to be one of the biggest issues facing Everett, “and I’m looking forward to working with Sgt. Gaff, Mr. Luongo, and the Traffic Commission, not only revamping the Residential Parking program but in making sure that safety for our pedestrians and our divers continues to be enforced 24/7.”
Councilor-at-Large Michael Marchese
Marchese seemed particularly frustrated by the parking issues being experienced by Everett residents.
“I have an issue with commercial vehicles,” said Marchese. “What I have on my street and on Clarence Street, we probably have 10-15 commercial vehicles parked there on any night from Birch Street up.”
Marchese said he receives many complaints from his constituents about the lack of parking spots in the city.
“Something has to be done because in this city, you can’t park anywhere,” said Marchese. “I’ve had a car parked in front of my house – I think it’s been parked there for a month. First of all, there’s too many cars in the city. We’ve definitely distributed way too many parking passes for the city.”
Gaff responded, “We’re receiving calls that there’s a lot of cars out there, yes, no question about it, but we’re not getting specific, like, ‘hey there’s 10 vans on my street, let’s look at it,’ because we have the capability to go in there. If we see that there’s 10 vehicles being issued out of one residential house, then we go down to ISD. That’s why we’re starting Phase 3 – we’re going to change how we do the residential sticker program. We agree that there’s [parking] issues.”
Councilor-at-Large Katy Rogers
Rogers asked the duo how many parking enforcement officers were employed in Everett.
“Right now we have eight parking enforcement officers, and as Sgt. Gaff said, the mayor [Carlo DeMaria] is looking at the data and will determine if we need more PEOs,” replied Luongo.
Rogers asked for the duo’s comments on “seven-day enforcement overnight city wide.”
“I’m not in favor of that,” Gaff replied candidly. “Because I like to go visit my friends in the City of Everett or I like to have friends come to my house on a Friday or Saturday night. I just think it would hurt a lot more businesses and restaurants that are opening late Friday and Saturday night. This is something the subcommittee might have to look at if we have a lot of people parking without stickers in the city.”
Rogers inquired whether there is a limit on the number of residential stickers per household.
“Right now, there is no limit on the amount of residential stickers per household,” answered Luongo.
Another issue raised by Rogers was the addition of bump-outs on Elm Street that are negatively impacting certain businesses.
Gaff said that because the street improvement project was a federally designed and administered one, “the bump-outs are put in according to the rules and regulations [of the federal government.]”
The bump-outs were done for pedestrian safety to cross the street,” added Gaff.
Ward 5 Councilor Robert Van Campen
Van Campen began by respectfully thanking “Sgt. Gaff, Mr. Luongo, members of the Traffic Commission, our friends from the Collector’s Office, Deputy Chief Hurley” for their attendance at the meeting.
“I can speak on behalf of the entire city council that we do appreciate the efforts that are being made in a somewhat difficult situation in this community,” said Van Campen.
Van Campen’s main issue focused on the training required for parking enforcement officers.
“What kind of training do our parking enforcement officers undergo?” asked Van Campen.
Luongo responded that he would meet with the officers to review the specifications and expectations for the job “and then they get trained and work one of the shifts in the day – they’ll work a little bit on each shift and just see the goings-on of the city – they just learn from the senior guys all the different [parking] violations and what they need to do, and what they’re responsible for.”
In a response to an inquiry by Van Campen, Luongo said that resident parking (16,000 violations in 2024) and street sweeping (11,000 violations in 2024) were the “top two by far” for parking violations in the city.
Ward 6 Councilor Peter Pietrantonio
As a former Department of Public Works official, Pietrantonio had his personal and professional parking experiences in Everett to fall back on, and Pietranonio didn’t disappoint the viewers at home – he brought his ‘A’ game into the forum.
Pietrantonio brought up the first of two recent winter snowstorms that have hit Everett so far in 2025.
“We only got five inches [of snow], let’s face it, it was only a five-inch storm – so, we [meaning Mr. Pietrantonio and Sgt. Gaff, we presume] worked snow together side-by-side for years, I know about towing, we know what streets we have to tow.”
Pietrantonio then asked, if the City knows “that we’re not going to tow [on certain streets during a storm], should we not let the people know if we’re not going to make it to that street [for snowplowing], can we cut that list down? Because we know that there’s more cars out there than ever.”
Gaff explained the snowplowing process, stating that major arteries in the city like Broadway, Chelsea Street, Hancock “can be saved for [plowing] until the end, because you can get the big plows down those streets, they go three in a row.”
“It’s the sidestreets now [that present the most difficult snowplowing issues during snowstorms],” said Gaff. “The Administration is already talking about getting different vehicles to plow – we may have to go to the 250s, the 350 pickup trucks, and not use the six-wheelers, they’re not making it [down narrower streets].”
“We had 79 streets earmarked to be taken care of during the storm, we brought that back down to the top 40,” related Gaff.
Addressing Pietrantonio’s request to notify residents that their streets would not be subject to the snow emergency edict during less severe snowstorms (5 inches of snow or less], Gaff said, “That would be an awful lot of work. What happens if we tell me that we’re not getting there, and all of sudden that storm stays around, or the ice sticks [to the pavement] and we need to get there? It just comes down to one thing, and I don’t mean to be real stickler here, but if you’re told to do something [remove your vehicle from the street during snow emergencies], do it. There’s no ifs, ands, ares about it – move your car, or it will be towed.”
During the discussion, Gaff stated that snow emergencies will usually go into effect four hours in advance of when the snow is forecast to begin, so crews can begin towing vehicles and clear streets for the snowplowing contingent.
Ward 4 Councilor Holly Garcia
Garcia acknowledged that being the final speaker of the evening, “most of my questions were asked and answered.”
“I totally support the community meetings and the committee,” began Garcia.
Garcia requested that the bus lane on Broadway be repainted. Gaff said he would speak with Director of Transportation Jay Monty about the matter.
Garcia asked about parking during street sweeping hours and whether vehicles would be ticketed or towed for violations.
“We will have that discussion with DPW directors and the Administration on that,” said Gaff. “I know the Administration is very well concerned about the financial burden that’s been put on residents, especially with COVID and people being out of work and things like that. That’s an ongoing discussion I will have with the Mayor.”
Other observations from a 100-minute meeting on parking
Sgt. Joe Gaff is a football coaching legend in Chelsea, where as the head coach of the Chelsea High Red Devils, he led the school to its first and only Super Bowl championship in the 1995 season. He is the current head football coach at Malden Catholic.
So, it was not surprising to see Coach Gaff use a football analogy when discussing the challenges involved in Everett’s parking situation. When Councilor Pietrantonio told
Gaff, “I don’t want to put you on the spot [about changing a parking law for multi-unit apartment buildings], the Super Bowl championship-winning coach offered, “I’ve got to make fourth-and-goal line calls once in a while, Pete, this is nothing.”
Council President Stephanie Martins aced her first test of leading a special meeting about a sensitive issue such as residential parking in Everett. Martins wisely allowed a couple of the “slightly” loquacious councilors to exceed the 5-minute time limit, and the Ward 2 councilor drew praise for her professional discretion.