Parking fine angers Gran

By Cam Scott
A SUNDAY afternoon visit to her grandson turned out being a costly exercise for Hallam woman Eunice McMurray.
After driving to his Soldiers Road home in Beaconsfield, Ms McMurray was issued a $63 fine for parking on the side of the narrow road, opposite the white dividing lines running down the centre of the road.
The problem, according to Ms McMurray, is not that she was fined, but the lack of alternatives she had to parking where she did.
Given that parking on a footpath and nature strip are also illegal, and that the rear of her car would have impeded pedestrians using the footpath across the house’s driveway, Ms McMurray chose what she says was the safest and least obstructive option.
She says that between Adamson Road and Kevin Close, there is no parking facility for visitors on that stretch of Soldiers Road.
She is concerned that if the situation remains unfixed, people will continue to park illegally and even dangerously, and Casey Council will continue to make easy money from people such as herself that are left with no other options.
“I don’t know what else I could have done. I chose the safest option I could in the circumstances,” she said.
“There are no bays for visitor or public parking between Kevin Close and Adamson Road. Can’t those houses have visitors?
“My concern is that council is going to keep collecting from infringement notices there without rectifying the problem.”
One solution Ms McMurray has suggested is to turn the nature strips, some of which are torn up with tyre marks anyway, into concreted parking bays.
Manager of community safety at the City of Casey, Brendan Fitzsimmons, said that the council officer who issued the ticket checked with people at houses on both sides of the road where the car was parked to request that it be moved, but noone knew whose car it was.
He said that providing nature strips were used responsibly and maintained, the City of Casey would not prosecute people who park their vehicles on nature strips outside their homes.
“At the end of the day, nature strips are not designed for parking, but the City of Casey takes the view that if you park there and take care of it, then you can park there. Providing people maintain the nature strip, we won’t prosecute for that,” he said.
He also said that no residential streets had specific visitor parking allocations outside houses and that council would not concrete the nature strips on Soldiers Road.
He did, however, leave the door open for individuals who wished to change their nature strips to get approval from council.