By Jim O'Sullivan

Sometimes, Tricia Strumm likes to stop back at her house in the morning after dropping her son off for school at B.C. High. They leave the house between 8:10 and 8:15, and on her way to her job as a secretary at Gate of Heaven Parish in South Boston, she sometimes wants to fix a sandwich at her house on Buttonwood Street.

If she can't find parking, she shrugs and moves on.

"By the time I get back to my house, I can't get a spot," Strumm said Tuesday night at the McCormack Civic Association meeting in St. Margaret's. "And the commuters look at you and smile, and they think I'm going to smile back, and I'm not."

Strumm is one of a growing number of advocates for residential parking in her neighborhood. Advocates have been circling petitions, and have been met with enthusiasm, they said.

The area, which includes the even side of Columbia Rd. from numbers 716 to 832, and Buttonwood, Locust, Mayhew, Mt. Vernon, Roseclair, and St. Margaret streets, is susceptible to heavy commuter parking because of its proximity to the JFK-UMass Red Line station. The station links outbound to both the Ashmont and Braintree extensions, and circulates buses to UMass-Boston. Commuters drive to the nearby McCormack neighborhood, and can take the subway north or south, or the bus to school.

"There's a lot of people who don't live in the neighborhood, and my guess is that they don't live in the city, a lot of them," said Michael McColgan, a member of the McCormack executive board. "They just park their cars, cross the street, and don't get their cars until 7 o'clock at night. People come home from work and can't park in front of their own homes."

Starting last October, local activists began working with the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) to move toward a residential parking policy mandating that only dwellers with cars registered in the neighborhood could receive parking stickers. According to Jim Mansfield, a BTD spokesman, 51 percent of the residents on each street must sign off on the policy in order for the department to enact the measure, a process that he said would take three months.

McColgan and fellow McCormack board member Gavin Sherman said they expect to submit the petition to the department in March.

While response has been enthusiastic for the most part, some residents balk at paying Boston's auto insurance rates, which outpace those of surrounding towns. Strumm reported a man signing the petition, then rethinking. "He said, 'My car's registered at my sister's house down in Weymouth, I can't do that'," Strumm said.

Mansfield said a small number of spaces will remain available on each street for temporary parking for cars not sporting residence stickers.