Parking in the North Bluff neighborhood of Oak Bluffs was back up for discussion on Tuesday, with several neighborhood residents saying a decision to create diagonal parking was creating safety issues.

Parking on Sea View avenue extension, which runs between the Steamship Authority terminal and the Island Queen ferry terminal, was recently changed from parallel parking to diagonal parking.

Highway superintendent Richard Combra Jr. made the change earlier this summer after erroneously thinking it had been approved by the selectman, board chairman Kathy Burton said.

Selectman Walter Vail said he has heard arguments from neighborhood residents and from Mr. Combra. “I think from my standpoint the official parking works pretty well, and having been on the North Bluff a number of times now, I don’t understand all the criticisms,” Mr. Vail said.

But residents were quick to point out their concerns. North Bluff resident Harvey Russell said he was concerned with safety and asked the board to return parking to the way it was. “Somebody is going to get hit, there’s going to be a major accident down there and somebody is going to get hurt,” he said, adding that the diagonal parking makes the road narrower, which is a hazard with cars, bikers and pedestrians on the streets.

Belleruth Naparstek said that her son, a traffic safety expert, was recently biking back from the beach to her North Bluff house with her seven-year-old grandson when a truck backed out and almost hit the boy. She cited statistics that said there are higher accident rates for angled parking than parallel parking.

“Recent actions made the street substantially less safe,” she said, turning the street into “commercial parking usage to the detriment of people who live there in four big houses that front Sea View.”

“I think there is compelling evidence that this was a mistake and that it’s dangerous,” she said. “The question each one of you have to ask yourselves is whether 15 parking spaces is worth a kid’s life, because that’s what you’re messing with.”

Selectman Gail Barmakian said she felt that changing the parking intensified use in the residential neighborhood. “It’s a more intense use in a residential zone, there’s no doubt about it, you have more parking.”

The selectmen did not vote on reversing the changes, with some saying they were not prepared to make a decision.

In other business, selectmen affirmed a decision to dedicate, at least for now, the Leonardo property to Little League ballfields.

In 2007 the town purchased the property for $1.1 million, intending to use it for a future wastewater treatment expansion and any other use town meeting saw fit. A portion was designated for wastewater use, and in April 2009 voters at town meeting agreed to spend $200,000 in community preservation funds on new baseball fields at the property.

Little League representative Phil Regan said they are working on infrastructure for the area, with the goal to have Little League championship games take place on the site by next June.

“We’ve made a fair amount of progress over the past few weeks,” he said.

Town administrator Robert Whritenour said that the crux of the debate seemed to be the town’s intent for the property, and that town meeting could change the use in the future.

The selectmen voted to offer reasonable assurance that they will retain the ballfields for wastewater use if needed.