Crescent Park residents whose blocks are inundated at night by cars from neighboring East Palo Alto may soon have a solution to their parking woes, though just about everyone agrees that this solution is, at best, a consolation prize.

The City Council will consider on Monday a proposal to ban overnight parking on several blocks near the East Palo Alto border for a year -- an idea sparked by concerns from dozens of residents about an influx of cars and litter in the area around the Newell Road bridge, which connects the two cities, counties and communities. For months, residents on the Palo Alto side of the divide have complained about cars from the other side of the bridge taking up their parking spaces and leaving behind trash.

The Holy Grail of solutions, residents agreed, would be a Residential Parking Permit Program, which restricts the hours non-residents can park on the neighborhood's streets. But as more than 40 residents from Crescent Park learned at Tuesday's meeting on the topic, this program is at best months if not years away. The city's prior proposal to set up a parking permit in Professorville was rejected by the City Council last year, at which time council members urged staff to consider solutions that are more comprehensive and that would not merely push the problem over to the next block.

Because of that setback, planning staff is now putting together a process that neighborhoods throughout the city will be able to use in the future if they want a parking-permit program, Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez told a packed room at the Lucie Stern Community Center. While this program is being developed, the city is reluctant to grant such a program to any neighborhood, including Crescent Park.

"We're hopeful on the staff side that we'll still be able to come together with a process of coming up with Residential Parking Permit Programs in other parts of the city," Rodriguez said. "Nonetheless, we did make it clear to residents of Crescent Park that it's not something we can move forward in the near term."

Instead of the permit program, residents will likely get a ban on overnight parking, an idea whose popularity fluctuates wildly from one neighborhood block to another. On sections of Edgewood Drive and Newell Road, the areas closest to the East Palo Alto border, the percentage of surveyed residents who said they would support the ban was between 80 percent and 100 percent. Just south of that, on Hamilton Avenue, support dropped to 70 percent. Further away from the city line, on Dana Avenue, support dropped even further. On the west side of the Dana and Newell Road intersection, only 30 percent voiced support for a ban; on the east side of the intersection, 54 percent supported it.

Each view was articulated at the Tuesday meeting, where some argued that the proposed ban is an important first step in the neighborhood's "journey" toward a more permanent solution. Others argued that the proposal is a waste of time and that it would only push the intruding cars into other parts of the city, where no ban exists.

Jason Fox, who lives on Southwood Drive, on the western edge of the impacted area, was in a latter camp.

"This is the most insane proposal I've ever heard because all you're going to do with this proposal is to move the problem to another block," Fox said. "That's all you're going to do – move it to another block."

But most of the attendees agreed that the solution, while imperfect, is worth trying. Those near the East Palo Alto border were particularly adamant about the need for near-term action. Neighborhood resident Richard Yankwich, who has been talking with Palo Alto and East Palo Alto officials about this problem for the past year, said the ban might be the best way to convince East Palo Alto officials to do something about the parking problem. Most of the cars come from the Woodland Park neighborhood west of Highway 101, a site of numerous dense housing developments. With most apartments allotted only one space per unit, residents in these developments have been forced to seek other areas for parking, including Crescent Park.

"I think we need to do this on a trial basis and see where it goes because if we don't like it, we can vote it and out and we can say we don't like the way it is," Yankwich said.

"It's really a city-to-city issue not a resident-to-resident issue," he later added, drawing the loudest applause of the evening.

A drive through the area illustrates the extent of the parking intrusion. At about 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, the stretch of Edgewood on either side of Newell Road was filled almost to capacity. While there were open spaces near Island Drive, the situation changed further east down Edgewood. Between 1462 Edgewood Drive and Phillips Road, there were 59 parked cars and one open space.

Shortly after 11 p.m., three people were observed parking their cars in the neighborhood and then walking over the Newell bridge, an understandable habit given that there wasn't a single open space on Clarke Avenue, which is on the East Palo Alto side of the bridge. Woodland Avenue was also filled to the brim in this part of East Palo Alto, with the only one parking space open, all the way at the eastern end of the road, near West Bayshore Road.

The problem isn't just the shortage of parking, residents said. In some cases, the cars block their driveways and drivers leave broken bottles, used condoms and other refuse behind, residents complained Tuesday.

If the council approves on Monday staff's recommendation, parking would be banned between 2 and 5 a.m. on blocks in which 70 percent of surveyed residents expressed support for the idea. Residents who wish to park overnight would be able to buy a permit for $5 per night to do so. Staff will also have the authority to later expand the overnight ban to the blocks where support is currently less than 70 percent if the residents submit a petition showing significant interest.

Rodriguez acknowledged Tuesday that the overnight ban is "not a perfect solution." The goal was to provide the neighborhood some relief while the process for setting up permit programs is being put together, he said.

"This concept of having an overnight parking restriction is very intrusive to residents," Rodriguez said. "It's effective. It stops the abuse that's happening. But it's not an ideal solution."

He noted that city staff has been talking to East Palo Alto officials about this problem, but not much has been done. There's some hope in the city that the problem will be addressed as part of East Palo Alto's process for adopting a new General Plan, a process that is just starting. Margaret Trujillo, an East Palo Alto resident who is part of a working group dealing with the General Plan, urged the Crescent Park residents to include her city in the discussion.

"I think the concern Crescent Park has is reflective of concern East Palo Alto has," Trujillo said. "I think when you say 'work together' as a Crescent Park community, I'd ask you to open your minds to the East Palo Alto community as well because you are part of the community."

Editorial Intern John Brunett contributed to this report.