Annemarie Rossomando and her family recently started renting a home on East Haven’s Cosey Beach Avenue.
“People park in front of our mailbox and it gets annoying,” she said of out of town visitors coming to East Haven’s beach. “They choose to pick our road and it causes a lot of traffic.”
While the line of cars on a weekday afternoon isn’t too long, residents say the parking situation becomes problematic for families living there on the weekend.
“If you own a home, you want people to come and visit you,” Jacqueline Munzu, of East Haven, said. “You want to make sure they can park and not have to walk four blocks to get to you.”
Nearby shoreline cities like New Haven and West Haven charge out of town guests for parking by their beaches. Munzu said her town should consider doing the same.
“I think if you don’t live in East Haven,” she said. “If you don’t pay taxes in East Haven, then you should pay to use the beach.”
Free of charge, only East Haven residents are allowed to park in the lot across from the town beach. East Haven Mayor Joe Maturo said the 150 spots are so precious, he is not willing to reserve any for out of town visitors, even at a small price.
“The $10 you’re going to get for maybe 10 or 15 cars is not worth the residents not being able to park in your community,” Maturo told NBC Connecticut.
Maturo said a town committee has already come up with regulations to address the parking concerns of the people who live on the coastal street, including banning parking on one side of Cosey Beach Ave.
“It’s my responsibility to make sure that the other residents of my community have a place to park when they want to come down to the beach and that’s why we can’t charge for parking because we don’t have the space to put them,” Maturo said.
For the remaining weekends in the beach season, there will still be cars lined up on one side of Cosey Beach Avenue.
