Belmont needs to revise its current parking plan for the High School. Residents on Myrtle and Cottage streets have been seeking relief from the town’s parking plan for more than four years after the town essentially prohibited parking on the streets east of Myrtle while allowing it on Myrtle and Cottage alone.
While members of the Select Board and now Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) have sympathized and agreed that the plan should be fair across all the neighboring streets, nothing has changed. And this is despite the fact that members of the TAC (and residents from other nearby streets) have noted at numerous meetings, including most recently on Oct. 8, 2026, that Myrtle has borne an unfair burden with respect to the parking allocation.
Residents have documented this unfair burden (and safety risks) through photos to the town for more than three years, yet nothing gets done. The safety risks include that an emergency vehicle may not be able to pass given the narrowness of the street or trying to exit a driveway into a street filled with parked cars. More importantly, there is the risk to our school children. Wellington or Middle School students often dart out from the many parked cars or try to cross a crowded street while cars hurriedly and routinely confront each other when the street is lined with parked cars. It is time to end this madness and more fairly distribute the parking across the streets, if there is indeed inadequate parking on Concord Avenue.
Several residents have noted that the expanded parking at the Jug handle outside the rink is not full on school mornings. Therefore, the simplest (and fairest) approach may be to simply apply the same parking ban to Myrtle and Cottage and shift that parking to the Jug handle.
Dan Halston, Myrtle Street
