The Elicker administration has promised to reimburse towing fees and cancel tickets for all 58 cars that were towed from five Wooster Square blocks Tuesday morning — after the city didn’t give residents, including the neighborhood’s alder, enough time to prepare for a snow-removal-related par king ban. “I sincerely apologize for the disruption this caused the residents of the neighborhood,” Mayor Justin Elicker said in a message sent to Wooster Square residents. The apology and towing-ticketing reversal took place more than a week after a major winter storm dumped a foot of snow on New Haven. The city towed and ticketed hundreds of cars for violating downtown, snow-emergency, and residential parking bans during the height of the storm. Thanks to a sustained stretch of below-freezing temperatures, much snow remains across the New Haven — with city crews continuing to work a week later to remove snow from the streets. City spokesperson Lenny Speiller told the Independent Thursday afternoon that “additional snow removal operations were scheduled” for Tuesday morning for Wooster Street, Chestnut Street, Wooster Place, Greene Street, and Academy Street. Speiller said that the city posted “no parking” signs on those blocks by 3 p.m. Monday. “Unfortunately,” Speiller said, that was not sufficient time to notify residents of the Tuesday morning parking ban. He said that the city aims to provide “no parking” notices to residents at least a day in advance “through both physical street sign postings and notifications from the New Haven Alerts system to residents who have registered for updates.” He confirmed that, in this instance, street signs were posted late and New Haven Alert notifications were not sent out. Speiller said that 58 cars in total were towed. “A few individuals” — less than five — “paid the ticket and will be reimbursed. The rest of the tickets were cancelled. The city is also reimbursing the tow fee for all vehicles.” “We sincerely apologize and regret the inconvenience this has caused and are committed [to] cancelling the tickets, reimbursing the towing fees and making it right,” Speiller concluded. Wooster Square Alder Amanda Martinelli was one of the neighbors who woke up Tuesday morning to find her car missing. “When you leave your car somewhere and it’s not there, you sit there in shock for a few minutes. Wait, where’s my car? Was it stolen? What happened?” she recalled in an interview with the Independent Thursday. She soon realized that it wasn’t just her car, but every car on Academy, Chestnut, Greene, Wooster Place, and Wooster Street. She soon received five or six emails and a couple of calls from constituents wondering what had happened. “I called the city,” Martinelli said, “and they were honestly on top of it right away… I said, listen, we don’t mind if you close the streets, you just gotta tell us” with more advance notice. She learned that signs were posted along the affected streets the night before, but “the signs were posted very late, a lot of people didn’t see it, and there was no other communication.” After Martinelli’s call, Mayor Elicker sent out an alert to Wooster Square residents. That message from the mayor read: “Unfortunately, an error was made and proper notification was not given which resulted in parking tickets and vehicle towing during the Wooster Square clean-up yesterday.” Elicker promised that the city would waive all towing tickets and reimburse residents for any fees they paid to the towing companies. “To begin the reimbursement process, please submit a hearing request form along with proof of payment,” Elicker wrote. “You can email your materials to [email protected]” or “you may submit them in person to Transportation and Parking at 200 Orange Street on the ground floor. If you choose to email, please note ‘Administrative Error – Wooster Square’ in the reference line to help expedite. Thank you for your patience, and again I apologize for the disruption.” “Our community came together,” Martinelli said Thursday. “Everybody reached out. We partnered together to have a great outcome.” “To my constituents, thank you so much for telling me and voicing your complaints,” she added. To recover her own car, she called the police department’s non-emergency number, shared her license plate, and found out that it was being held at Anthony’s High Tech Auto Center. She finally retrieved her car on Thursday afternoon. Martinelli sent out an email to Ward 8 constituents Thursday morning about the neighborhood’s ticketing-towing saga. “I want to extend my sincere thanks to the City crews who worked tirelessly in grueling conditions to keep our neighborhood safe – a priority we all share,” Martinelli wrote. “At the same time, I am deeply grateful to Mayor Elicker and his staff for their partnership and for listening to our concerns. By recognizing the notification breakdown and taking immediate accountability, the administration has been essential in making this right for our residents.” Yeah, the snow’s annoying. But the park does look pretty. The post City Apologizes For Towing 58 Cars On Short Notice appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less