2-Hour Parking on Chopping Block

Two-hour parking on Taunton Avenue in East Providence could disappear. And so could the city solicitors appointed again by the City Council at Tuesday night’s meeting in City Hall.

The City Council asked its current solicitor, Orlando Andreoni, to draft an ordinance that will change all 2-hour parking on Taunton Avenue in the city to 6-hour parking.

The proposed ordinance is expected to be ready by the City Council’s first meeting on Feb. 5.

The ordinance is a response to requests by several business owners on Taunton Avenue to do something about the need for them to move their vehicles every 2 hours. The 2-hour limit was set up originally to prohibit all-day parking by vehicles described as  “bus commuters” to Providence by East Providence Police Chief Joseph Tavares.

Tavares and public works director Steve Coutu told the councilors that extending the parking limit appears to be the simplest way to deal with the business owners’ concerns. They were charged by the City Council to come up with a response for the business owners. 

Their recommendation could make 2-hour parking disappear. 

The solicitor and two assistant solicitors reappointed to those posts could disappear as well at the Jan. 31 meeting of the East Providence Budget Commission.

The City Council had to reappoint Timothy Chapman as solicitor and Gregory Dias and Robert Craven as assistant solicitors because their appointments were disapproved by the budget commission at its meeting last Thursday. 

The disapprovals were a procedural measure even as salaries of $65,000 a year for the solicitor and $40,000 a year for the assistant solicitors were approved by the budget board.

But the reappointments will stand only if the budget commission decides not to go through with hiring legal representation resulting from a search that has been ongoing after an RFP for legal services was sent out, said City Manager Peter Graczykowski, who serves on the budget commission.

The budget commission plans to take action on that search at its Jan. 31 meeting, he said. That board could decide to approve the hiring of legal counselors for the city from that search, or it could choose to go with the City Council’s appointments -- attorneys who could have applied to the RFP. The names of any candidates have not been released.

Either way, Andreoni will continue to serve as city solicitor until Jan. 31, said Graczykowski.