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Debate intensifies at public hearing over bill to eliminate municipal parking minimums
Summary
Hundreds of witnesses and planning groups debated HB 7,061, which would bar local governments from imposing mandatory off-street parking minima. Proponents said mandates raise housing and business costs and harm the environment; opponents warned of rural and public-safety consequences and urged local control or a tailored approach.
Supporters of HB 7,061, which would prohibit municipalities from imposing mandatory off-street parking minimums in zoning regulations, told the Planning and Development Committee removing mandates reduces housing costs, spurs infill development and makes neighborhoods more walkable.
Sarah Bronin, who led Hartford’s effort to eliminate parking minimums in 2017, described the city’s post-reform experience as “overwhelmingly positive,” saying developers still built parking where markets required it and removal unlocked adaptive reuse and new housing. Multiple national and Connecticut advocates — including CT Parking Reform, the Parking Reform Network, Desegregate Connecticut and the Mercatus Center — cited studies and mapping that show Connecticut has a large existing supply of parking and argued mandates are an unfunded cost passed to developers and renters.
Daniel Harriges of the Parking Reform Network said about 100 cities have fully abolished mandates and thousands have adopted partial reforms, and warned that the empiric basis for traditional parking formulas is weak. Speakers including Zachary Oberholtzer and Jay Stange said parking requirements induce driving, consume valuable land and raise construction costs for housing by tens of thousands of dollars per structured space.
Opponents — including the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, some municipal planners and several planners who said they support targeted reforms — urged the committee to preserve municipal authority to account for local conditions. Randy Collins of CCM said a blanket ban “goes too far” and raised concerns that rural roads, narrow streets and emergency access needs are not the same as downtown contexts that motivated reform. Sam Gold of RiverCOG and others asked the committee to preserve local tools such as payment-in-lieu-of-parking and to ensure commissions can address public-safety access and equity for existing residents.
John Guskowski of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Planning Association and some planning professionals supported removing numeric minima while retaining the municipal ability to assess context-specific parking sufficiency and public-safety implications. Several speakers recommended options instead of an outright ban: carve-outs for rural areas, population thresholds, or language preserving municipal authority to enforce access and ADA/compliance requirements.
Speakers also raised implementation details: whether the statute should include explicit language protecting municipal authority to require parking where necessary for safety, public transit access, hospitals, or truck/industrial operations, or to allow phased changes aligned with municipal planning schedules. Testimony cited figures and examples: Hartford eliminated mandates in 2017; one speaker said 167 of 169 municipalities currently have minimums; estimates of the cost of a structured parking space ranged from about $20,000 to $50,000 per space depending on context.
No committee vote was taken during the hearing. The public record contains extensive written testimony and a wide variety of local and statewide perspectives, leaving the committee with several drafting choices: a state-level ban, targeted reforms for transit corridors, population thresholds, or a model ordinance approach to guide local implementation.
