Last Updated on July 23, 2017 by Lawrence Berezin
Will Mayor DeBlasio’s crack down on placard abuse result in more parking tickets and vacant spaces?
Mayor DeBlasio was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea when a court overturned 2008 ruling and forced him to issue 50,000 new DOE placards (The original 2008 Court ruling cut DOE placards from 63,000 to 11,000 during the Bloomberg administration). The principal’s union won a monumental reversal of fortune that contributed to a parking placard abuse tsunami since there were only 11,000 parking spaces reserved for school use. Yikes!
With 44,496 placards issued to members of the NYPD and another 54,020 handed out by the Department of Transportation to groups such as the FBI, nonprofit organizations and disabled individuals, de Blasio, who will run for re-election this year, put the total number now in circulation at 160,516.
What is a mayor to do?
Order Cops to issue parking tickets to cops
Here are some steps initiated by our mayor:
- Hire 100 new Parking Ticket Warriors
- Create a 16-member anti-placard fraud unit
- Tow placard-abusing chariots
- Permanently revoke placards for abuse
- Form a team of 8 sergeants, 8 cops, and a rotating cast of warriors to roam the city in search of placard abuse (headed by Elliot Ness)
They’ll focus on illegally parked NYPD vehicles, and on private cars with department-issued parking placards.
Ticket-worthy offenses will include double parking and parking on a sidewalk or at a fire hydrant, crosswalk or bus stop. Police cars on official business will get some leeway, a law-enforcement source said.
But team members are chafing at having to ticket fellow officers, who, for as long as anyone can remember, have been able to put a city parking placard in their civilian car windshield and park pretty much anywhere with impunity.
Commentary
There are very roughly 3.4 to 4.4 million parking spaces in New York City, of which about 81,175 spaces have a meter (Source: Rachel Weinberger, based on her field work in Park Slope and Jackson Heights).
-See, also, an article appearing in Streetsblog entitled, “New York Has 81,875 Metered Parking Spaces And Millions of Free Ones.”
Ergo, the number of placards issued when compared to the number of parking spaces is insignificant…Or, is it?
Why not allow cops to park anywhere they want to? Let’s simply make it a cop-perk. Let’s not forget our principals, teachers, and office staff. How can we expect them to drive to school if they can’t park their cars nearby? Let’s make it a school employee perk.
Add a pinch of reporters, clergy, doctors, dentists, and disabled to this toxic parking brew and let it simmer while all of us search for a vacant parking space.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about possible solutions to this parking placard challenge. Or, is it a problem, to begin with?
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