Streetsblog: City Council Hard at Work on Pro-Parking Bills
Reported by uncivil on Tue, Jan 27 2009
In December and January, reports Gotham Gazette [1], no fewer than four bills surfaced that would facilitate parking in some way, whether or not it's actually legal.
Streetsblog has already written about the most egregious of these: Simcha Felder's on-street "grace period" proposal [2], which would effectively abolish time limits set by parking meters. But Maria Baez has slipped in a bill that could, if adopted, be more damaging. Baez, who represents District 14 in the Bronx (where three-quarters of households are car-free), wants the city to issue a parking permit to every New York City public school teacher. Not only would Intro 894 [3] be disastrous in its own right, as Cap'n Transit points out [4], the net effect could be even worse.
If her bill passes, it's likely that the police, firemen and every other category of government employee will want their entitlements entrenched in law.
The Baez bill, of course, comes as the city has cut down on parking permits [5] in order to reduce driving by government employees. Last year about 52,000 teachers had their permits rescinded, leaving some 11,000 with free on-street parking privileges, in addition to those who use 15,000 designated off-street spots.
[more at: http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/01/27/city-council-hard-at-work-on-pro-parking-bills/]
2 Comments
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Posted on Tue, Jan 27 2009 at 02:52 PM
This is a great idea and I wish these select council people all the luck in the world. It is great to see that there are some politicians on our side. I do hope that traffic agents are protected under the same umbrella as the N.Y.P.D. I do not mind if the politicians secure specific parking spots in front of their offices just as long as the same spots could be secured for us. I will say that this has a good chance of passing and becoming law. Just look at the numbers.
Over 60K teachers
35K cops
18K firemen
23K traffic agents.
Those are a lot of constituents who stand to gain quite of bit if these measures are passed by the council. God bless them all for doing the right thing. Now if they would only kill the measure that the mayor passed through to designate bike lanes throughout the city. This is an utter and complete waste of time and will only result in a loss of revenue for ethe city just like it did back when mayor Koch had the bike lanes built. We all know what happened to those lanes just a few years after they were built. I guess Bloomberg likes to learn the hard way, just look at what is going on down in Herald Square. It is just a matter of time before the streets are reclaimed for the sole use of cars just as it was meant to be.
Posted on Wed, Jan 28 2009 at 07:54 PM
Kudos to the NYC councilmen for finally doing the right thing for its city workers.
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