Healy: City Never Broke Parking Law

Cambridge has not broken a federal law restricting commercial parking, City Manager Robert W. Healy told the City Council last night.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE) sent a letter to Deputy City Solicitor Donald Drisdall noting the "legal ramifications" of "apparent discrepancies" between a 1975 EPA law on commercial parking and Cambridge's compliance with it.

The legal counsels for both organizations also insisted that Healy release more information on the amount and type of parking in Cambridge "by no later than 10 days" from the receipt of their letter.

In a reply to representatives of the EPA and the DEQE, Healy rejected charges that the City has issued "substantially more permits" for commercial parking spaces than the number allowed by the federal directive.

Healy: Freeze Not Exceeded

"Research by the City indicates that Cambridge has not exceeded any freeze," Healy said in his letter. The 1975 ruling prohibits expansion of available commuter parking from 1973 levels. This decision affected the City of Boston also, although Healy noted that "the parking problem of Cambridge...[is] very different from that of Boston" where he said there are plenty of off-street parking places, "while Cambridge...[has] relatively few."

"My concern in the gobbledygook of all these regulations is that we do not forget that there is a purpose to the parking freeze" said Vice-Mayor Alice K. Wolf. She added that the EPA regulation exists for reasons of "environmental protection and the health and safety of residents."

Healy is scheduled to provide updated statistics on Cambridge parking permits to the EPA and the DEQE in a meeting later this week.