Cars parked along Bartlett Street in downtown Lewiston on Jan. 29 lay under a blanket of snow. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal file

LEWISTON — During the most recent snowstorm Sunday night, the city had 35 vehicles towed and issued 189 parking tickets. Officials said many more vehicles would have been towed if more tow trucks had been available.

As the city preps for more snow Thursday, officials have already called a citywide parking ban between 6 p.m. Thursday and 5 a.m. Friday and they are hoping to avoid the flurry of enforcement activity they saw this week.

Lt. Derrick St. Laurent, public information officer for the Lewiston Police Department, said the numbers they saw Sunday are consistent with parking bans in previous years, especially for the first few bans of the year.

He said the first few bans typically result in “a significant number of vehicles towed just because the community needs to be more vigilant about checking the weather to see if a ban is being issued.”

“Like everything else the Lewiston Police Department does, we make every effort to gain voluntary compliance,” he said. “Believe it or not, enforcing a parking ban is not a glamorous part of being a police officer.”

Police and other city staff often meet to discuss how the city can improve on getting the word out, he said.

In 2019, the city began flashing the lights in the bell tower at City Hall when parking bans were in place, hoping to add another way to notify the public.

Mayor Carl Sheline said a few years ago, he remembers the city towing nearly 100 cars during one storm, after which there was a dramatic uptick in residents signing up for a city alert, which will notify residents of a parking ban.

Sheline said parking bans are really a safety issue, making the job easier for plows and allowing better, cleaner streets for residents following a storm.

“We don’t want to ticket and tow anybody,” he said. “By having our residents comply with parking bans we can snowplow efficiently and have clean and clear streets after storms.”

During a discussion about the parking enforcement during Tuesday’s council meeting, acting City Administrator Brian O’Malley said the city does not have its own towing service, meaning it relies on local services. The city would have towed more vehicles as opposed to issuing parking tickets on Sunday if more trucks had been available, he said.

St. Laurent said sometimes tow trucks are responding to accidents that obviously take priority over parking ban tows.

Asked Wednesday, Lewiston spokeswoman Angelynne Amores said the city has been using a threshold of 4 inches to determine when to call a ban.

According to a city news release, all city parking garages are free on weekends and weekdays between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., making them a perfect spot for parking during bans.

For more information on city parking bans, go to www.lewistonmaine.gov/WPB.