Athol Selectboard approves overnight parking at Fish Park

ATHOL – The Selectboard voted to allow overnight parking at Fish Park through April 1, 2026, following complaints about an overnight parking ban enacted earlier this year.

“Last spring, the board voted to not allow overnight parking at Fish Park, anywhere at Fish Park,” Town Manager Shaun Suhoski said at the Dec. 16 meeting.

“The other big issue we had noticed was when people would go there to play little league, all the parking was already taken up by all the cars that were sitting there, so they all had to park up and down the street,” said Department of Public Works Assistant Director Paul Raskevitz, adding that this led to the request to ban parking in the area.

Suhoski pointed out that the board has approved the sale of overnight parking permits at various locations near downtown, including at 100 Main St,, behind the Millers River Environmental Center. The permits are $5 each and run the entire winter season.

“So, folks in the neighborhood who may not have off-street parking, for $5, can have overnight parking in that lot,” he said.

Neighborhood resident Kristen Rader, speaking via Zoom, asked the board, “If parking in general was banned at Fish Park, why are signs up only on one side?”

Suhoski explained that the board’s decision in the spring was meant to ban overnight parking at the park as a whole. He said that Rader and another resident had noted “that there are cars that park off-street on Union Street. It’s at the top of that hill. They pull off-street, squeeze themselves off the roadway to get off-street parking up there. So, some people on Maple Street feel they can’t park (overnight), but someone across the park is pulling onto a different section of the parkland.”

“I think we need to look at going one way or another and I think we maybe look at something temporary to get us through the winter, as opposed to doing something more permanent, especially since we’re looking at making some serious upgrades to Fish Park overall,” said Bialecki.

Bialecki asked Raskevitz if allowing parking all the way around the park would create a problem for the DPW when it comes to plowing the surrounding streets. His said it wasn’t, but pointed out people would be responsible for shoveling out their own vehicles since “there will be a wall of snow there.”

“I think we have to take a look at this as a temporary option and make it a level playing field for everyone that lives around Fish Park,” Bialecki said. “We have a lot of residents that live there.”