SALEM – Multiple residents have expressed their frustration with the removal of street parking in their neighborhood.

Ridgewood Drive residents Heather Schreffler, Christina Cook and David Poblide all told the city council in its meeting Tuesday that they were unhappy with the recent removal of street parking on Ridgewood Drive; and that they wanted it back. They also voiced frustrations with how the parking ban was implemented, arguing that it had been done unevenly, unfairly, without being discussed with the majority of residents and without their knowledge. It was further alleged that the change had been made at the behest of a single resident.

“Whatever happens on Ridgewood up to Park [Avenue] has to happen all the way up. There’s no justification. I don’t think there are any safety issues, we’ve never seen a traffic violation, or incident. The road doesn’t suddenly narrow on our side of Ridgewood. There’s no school on our side of Ridgewood. This makes no sense,” said Cook.

“There’s been on street parking on Ridgewood for 78 years. I would like [City Service Safety Director] Joe [Cappuzzello] to show me the safety assessment you had done that shows something on Ridgewood changed to necessitate putting no parking signs up,” said Poblide “You only painted down past the person who had the issue, you didn’t paint the whole street down to my section of the street…you didn’t paint it down to my house, you painted it to the complaint, and you stopped.”

They also argued that if street parking on Ridgewood is not reinstated in full, it should at least be permitted during the day.

Schreffler said that when her family purchased their home on Ridgewood 25 years ago, they chose it because it was “the kind of neighborhood where you’d borrow a cup of sugar, or an egg from a neighbor,” and that they are invested in that community. However, recently its character has shifted with “some bitterness and negativity.”

“This isn’t the neighborhood we have enjoyed over the years. To make matters worse, my mother’s car was ticketed and threatened to be towed after 25 years of being able to park in front of our home. I want to be able to continue to host holiday dinners and birthday parties like we have without having to try to remember to get permission to park out front,” said Schreffler.

Schreffler said that they had gone door to door speaking with neighbors, and while some residents on Ridgewood aren’t opposed to the ban, the no-parking signs now extend all the way to Park Avenue, and residents from the 1400 and 1500 block want street parking to be reinstated and 14 of the 28 homes affected have signed a petition stating the same.

Cook said that she felt like residents’ concerns were “falling on deaf ears” and that “two houses up on the other side of Park [Avenue] they can park, and they’ve left their cars there for days on end.” Cook also called for any safety or traffic studies that were completed to inform the parking change to be released to the public if street parking is not going to be reinstated.

Poblide argued that the change was unnecessary and that nothing had changed to make street parking on Ridgewood unsafe, and that there had been no traffic issues in the area in years. He also said that Ridgewood was “the cleanest, nicest neighborhood in Salem,” which was why her purchased a house there, a house which he “bought with on street parking.”

“You just did it for a friend, it had nothing to do with safety. There haven’t been any accidents on Ridgewood, there haven’t been any children hurt, there hasn’t been anything that happened on Ridgewood in the entire time we’ve lived there, and the neighbors tell us in the entire time they’ve been there. So, this was just done for no damn reason other than to make somebody happy,” said Poblide.

The city council will meet next at 7 p.m. on Aug. 19.