LEWISTON — A policy that lets people park on Lewiston’s streets until a winter storm is brewing works, according to city officials.

“Quite frankly, it’s working better than we expected,” police Chief Michael Bussiere told City Councilors during a workshop meeting Tuesday night. “We had some concerns about how it would go, about how many cars are left out on the street and getting the plows through. There were violations, but they are going down.”

The city adopted the new downtown winter parking rules this year, replacing the old policy that banned all parking downtown from November to May.

According to the new policy, most residents can continue to park on the street throughout the winter as long as there is no storm expected. Parking is still banned for the entire winter on several narrow downtown streets that are marked with “no parking” signs.

Once a parking ban has been called, residents need to get their cars off the streets to make room for the city’s snowplows. If they don’t, they may be ticketed and towed.

Most move, Bussiere said. Wreckers towed 56 cars downtown in December in the first test of the city’s new storm-by-storm parking ban.

“After that first storm, we’ve seen those numbers gradually decrease,” Bussiere said. “The second storm, we towed 11, the third storm, there were 17 towed and the fourth storm, there were 30 towed, over two nights.”

But the city has put a number of $30 parking tickets on cars, and Councilor Richard Desjardins said that concerned him.

“When we changed the ban to this, it was to ease the burdens on residents and also the businesses,” Desjardins said. “But doing it the way we are doing it, with these tickets, is not doing the citizens any justice.”

In the case of the storm that came on Feb. 23 and 24, Desjardins noted the ban started at 11 p.m. and police began ticketing cars at midnight, even though very little snow was on the ground at that point.

“We are confusing the citizens with premature parking bans,” Desjardins said.

Bussiere said the city does try to start the bans earlier when a storm is expected over a weekend. They have fewer opportunities to communicate on the weekends and many people — especially Bates College students — may leave for the weekend.

The city will notify residents via TV, radio, newspapers, the city’s website, text messages and email when a parking ban will go into effect. The city has also set up a parking ban telephone hotline at 513-3141 that residents can call to check parking ban status. They may also visit the city’s website, www.lewistonmaine.gov, where information about current parking bans will be posted.

“But many people don’t subscribe to our services, so we really don’t have many ways to spread the word during the weekend,” City Administrator Ed Barrett said.

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