City council passes law to curb placard abuse

NY Post

City Council members overwhelmingly backed Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s plan to rein in widespread abuse of city-issued parking permits, approving all nine of his bills he put forward to crack down on placard abuse.

“Placard abuse is corruption,” Johnson told reporters ahead of the Council’s Tuesday vote. “We’ve tolerated it for years as one of those unchangeable facts in New York City, but those days are hopefully over.”

The package of bills would up the fine for illegal placard use — a rampant practice among city employees — from $250 to $500. It would require city employees to apply for placards and explain why they should be granted the permit.

The NYPD would also be required to conduct 50 targeted placard enforcement sweeps each week under the supervision of the city’s Department of Investigation.

Furthermore, city police would be tasked with maintaining an electronic database of all placards in circulation and tracking progress towards eliminating improper use of city parking permits.

Critics frequently complain the NYPD fails to crack down on placard abuse since cops are frequently spotted misusing them, but Johnson told reporters DOI’s involvement ensures NYPD will take the issue seriously.

“We wanted an outside check,” Johnson said. “Traffic enforcement agents who are supposed to be writing the summonses and tickets … don’t always do it because they are afraid of policing the police.”

Looks like someone missed a sweep on Queens Blvd on the night of the new legislation. Speaking of outside checks, how about compensating George the Atheist for his recent expose'.

 

City (still) trying to crack down on parking placard abuse

From the Daily News:

The city has handed out a whopping 160,000 parking placards, to teachers, cops, Department of Transportation workers and others.

Many drivers still use dubious or outright fake placards — and manage to avoid tickets.

Meanwhile, drivers with legit placards park where they're not supposed to — on the sidewalk or blocking crosswalks. City placard holders are also only supposed to use the placards while on official business.

Under the proposed legislation, which will be introduced next week, the minimum fine for using a bogus or unauthorized placard would double from $250 to $500.

Another bill would require the city to yank a real placard if it is used inappropriately three times in a year.

The legislation would also create an electronic tracking system for city-issued placards, so officials will know who has one and whether they've been caught misusing it, and cops can confirm in real time whether a permit displayed on a car is valid.

And the NYPD would have to issue reports on how many complaints they get about placards abuse, and how many tickets they give out.

City Council acknowledges that city residents own cars and need parking

From the Observer:

Another bill—sponsored by Upper Manhattan Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, chairman of the Council’s Committee on Transportation, as well as Levine and Queens Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer—calls on DOT to establish and implement RPP citywide.

Rodriguez referred to a study conducted by the City University of New York (CUNY) and New York University (NYU) that found more than 50 percent of New Yorkers surveyed were willing to pay an annual fee for RPP.

“We would like to see a system in place where 80 percent of the area will be reserved to the residents of the local community that we would like to bring the parking system,” Rodriguez said at a rally on Wednesday afternoon. “We also feel that by paying a small fee every year, those local residents, they will not have to compete with anybody else.”

At the Council’s monthly pre-stated meeting on Wednesday afternoon, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said he plans to review the bills with all of the Council members.

“I understand that there are many folks that live in communities across the city who find it very frustrating that they can’t find parking in their neighborhoods,” Johnson said. “We also are trying to disincentivize cars in New York City. We’re trying to get people to use cars less in New York City.”

He said state law empowers the city to enact RPP.

“State law says that municipalities with a population of over one million people are allowed to enact residential parking, and so I believe we do have the authority to do this,” Johnson continued.

New York City is one of the only major cities in the United States that does not have some version of an RPP. Such a system currently exists in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Albany and Buffalo.

Parking placard abusers to feel the heat

From AM-NY:

As civil servants continue to illegally park personal vehicles on city streets unticketed, Mayor Bill de Blasio renewed a vow Thursday that he made last May: “We’re going to crack down.”

Safe-streets and good-government activists have long objected to how the vehicles park daily and dangerously around the five boroughs — on sidewalks, in front of hydrants, at curbs, in restricted zones — a practice especially acute near courts, firehouses and police precincts.

“The message is very clear: we’re coming for anyone who violates the rules relating to a placard, or anyone who has an inappropriate placard,” he said Thursday at an unrelated news conference.

Across the city, department-themed hats, vests, union calendars, union-issued placards — which confer no legal status — and handwritten notes are placed on dashboards and amount to impunity to traffic agents and cops, who refuse to ticket brethren.

De Blasio said Thursday that the NYPD’s top transportation cop, Thomas M. Chan, would soon be providing an update of the department’s enforcement efforts.

After de Blasio spoke, his spokesman Austin Finan reissued a statement he gave amNewYork for a story published earlier in the week: that there were 41,931 placard summonses issued last year, compared to 28,269 in 2016.

Peralta wants residential parking permits near LGA

From the Queens Chronicle:

State Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst) receives extensive numbers of constituent complaints regarding parking problems in residential neighborhoods near LaGuardia Airport.

The trouble, he said, is largely airport-related. And he has introduced a bill in the Senate that would allow the city to set up a one-year trial period during which 80 percent of the parking spaces on residential streets within two miles of LaGuardia would be reserved for residents with a paid parking sticker.

The sticker, specific to one car, would be applied to the inside of the windshield.

“One of the problems is people working on the construction jobs at the airport, which is going to go on for at least four more years,” he said. “Then you have people using the airport who park, leave their car and come back in a week.”

As for where he would like workers at the airport to park, Peralta said that is not under the scope of his bill.

“That should have been worked out beforehand,” he said. “There are places available.”

Many major cities in the United States, he said, have some form of paid permits for residential parking.

Peralta’s measure, S.6931, also would set aside 20 percent of the spaces for nonresidents. Commercial streets would not come under the program.

He said he is working to find a sponsor for a companion bill in the state Assembly.

The senator said any fee would be a “reasonable” one, but that the amount would have to be worked out in Albany and the City Council.

City employee parking abuse down a little

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Chronicle’s Michael Gannon has been investigating illegal parking by city employees — or people passing themselves off as such — for about a year, mostly on the congested streets around Borough Hall in Kew Gardens and neighboring Briarwood.

On Gannon’s last surveys of the area, conducted over the last week, he still found unticketed cars with placards parked illegally: alleged cops in No Standing zones and blocking fire hydrants, for example. Not much improvement there. But what he did not see were the vests, patches and caps that had been used as substitutes. So there’s been a change, but more needs to be done. City employees have enough privileges as it is.

Police upset over parking placard ticket quota

From CBS 2:

Stunning charges Tuesday night claimed that the city is establishing a new parking ticket quota system going after drivers with government-issued permits.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, city cash registers are apparently going to take in an estimated $6 million more from tickets issued to city workers who abuse their parking privileges and park illegally.

De Blasio made it clear that when he said he would hire 100 new traffic agents and establish a new 16-member NYPD permit abuse squad, it would be paid for with ticket revenue.

And? If you're abusing your position, you probably should be fined double.

Cars with placards park wherever, whenever

From CBS 2:

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s crackdown on rampant parking permit abuse by city officials is so far a no-go.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer found, some school personnel are still ignoring the rules.

CBS2 found a mountain of abuses Friday, after Mayor Bill de Blasio gave school officials 50,000 new permits and then tried to deal with the blowback by ordering the NYPD to ticket and tow the violators.

Multiple drivers with placards were spotted parking in no standing zones, and in zones where signs read, “no parking anytime.”

Mayor announces crackdown on parking placard abuse

From CBS 2:

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a controversial plan to issue parking permits to school staff members.

Now, he says City Hall plans to crack down and end rampant abuse.

“Parking is one of the biggest quality of life concerns of all New Yorkers,” de Blasio said.

As CBS2’s Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reports, the man who just gave anyone who works in a city school a placard bonanza – 50,000 of them – announced that just as he giveth he can taketh away.

Abusers will not only be fined or towed, but subject to “permanent ineligibility.”

“We’re concerned also about the placards that have been provided to police and other first responders,” de Blasio said.

Kramer: “Are you really going to tow cops and teachers’ cars, and really, really going to do it?”

De Blasio: “Sure.”

Kramer: “Why?”

De Blasio: “Because it’s against the rules. It’s as simple as that… It’s not fair to residents of neighborhoods.”

As part of the crackdown, the mayor is hiring 100 additional traffic agents to go after placard abusers, adding more tow trucks and creating a new $100 parking fine for placard misuse.

The chief enforcer will be the NYPD’s Chief of Transportation Thomas Chan, who is also creating a new 16-member task force of cops.

DOE parking placards ripe for abuse

From CBS 2:

Mayor Bill de Blasio was under fire Monday evening for a new gift to school employees.

As CBS Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, there has been a dramatic increase in free parking permits. Kramer also reported there were numerous abuses before the new permits even hit the streets.

“Historically, anyone with a (parking) placard in their car abuses that placard,” said former city Traffic Commissioner Sam Schwartz, better known as “Gridlock Sam.”

And CBS2 found numerous abuses even before de Blasio has doled out numerous new parking placards.

A Chevrolet with a Department of Education placard that expired three years ago in 2014 parked in a no zone for Health Department vehicles.

Other cars with DOE permits were seen parked in a no standing zone, and others still were seen just parked on the school sidewalk.

None of the drivers got parking tickets.

Bogus parking permits at housing projects

From NBC:

As the de Blasio administration seeks to raise parking rates in the lots next to public housing towers, an I-Team investigation finds vehicle owners are frequently parking for free, using borrowed permits, expired permits or no permits at all.

Over the course of three weeks, the I-Team paid multiple visits to five New York Public Housing Authority lots that were previously cited for fraudulent parking practices in a 2012 City Department of Investigation probe.

The I-Team found free riders were at it again, parking without valid permits and getting away with it.

Bayside blocks near LIRR popular for parking

From the Times Ledger:

Matt Carmody, the director of transportation for VHB, presented “heat maps” during the public meeting, which displayed the utilization of parking on residential streets within a half mile radius of the LIRR Station on 41st Avenue, color coding the streets at different times of day.

The streets with a utilization rate at or above 85 percent were marked in red. And between 8 a.m. and the end of data collection at 7 p.m., the residential street map of Bayside was almost nothing but red.

There are 12 permit-only parking spaces in the DOT lot as well as 47 short-term (four-hour maximum) parking spaces and 33 available long-term (15-hour maximum) parking spaces.

In VHB’s findings, the municipal lot does not fill up until the afternoon, around 1 p.m. But once it is full, it stays full, because there are limited options at that point in the day for parking on residential streets.

One of the most attractive short-term solutions to those community members present at the public meeting was to introduce a parking permit system for employees and business owners offstreet and on side streets, which VHB consultants said might take away some of the cars now parked in meter spots.

Other more long-term solutions proposed include working with DOT to reconfigure and stripe on-street parking spaces and readjust meter rates for different times of day. Also, Sclair said the BID would look into ways to encourage a private entity to buy the municipal DOT lot from the city to build a parking garage further down the line.

Vests serve as placards

Hey Crapper,

If I had a construction vest to put on my dashboard, would it also count as a placard? Every day I see dozens of DOT and MTA staffers doing this near Borough Hall. If they don't have an actual placard, why aren't they being ticketed?

Anonymous fan.

Expired placard = ticket

Hmmm...an expired placard?

So whose ride is this? Helen's?

Ah, sweet justice!

You can't hide from the Parking Avenger!

Hi Crapper,

Look what I found today, an unmarked Chevy Impala at the corner of
80th Road and Kew Gardens Road, standing at a hydrant without even a
placard. Does the car owner think that having tinted windows and
protruding rooftop antennae entitle it to block a fire hydrant near a
tight street corner?

Across the street from this office are the offices of DA Richard
Brown, Borough President Melinda Katz, Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz
and Rep. Grace Meng. Imagine someone violating a law as basic as
keeping a hydrant clear in such a politically sensitive neighborhood.

I doubt any of the listed elected officials will confront the cops
about their placard and parking abuses. I must now return to my
office.

Parking Avenger.

Parking Avenger strikes at Borough Hall

Hi Crapper,

I work near Borough Hall, where the surrounding parking spots are often occupied by vehicles bearing placards. You can imagine how many of them are fake, coming from nonexistent agencies and from unions representing various kinds of officers that have no authority to avoid paying for parking.

As a taxpaying citizen, I get parking tickets all the time, but these entitled space hogs get a free ride. Well today I decided to do something. Upon discovering that the Honda on Queens Boulevard and 78th Avenue has a useless placard from the Federal Police Officers Association but no parking receipt for the spot, I decided to take an old orange envelope and write my own prank ticket.

Perhaps my action will inspire more citizens to write their own tickets as well. As civilians, we cannot levy financial penalties not vandalize other people's vehicles. The best we can do is issue a warning and shame them on Queens Crap. Let's hope my idea catches on.

-Parking Avenger

Ooooh, I'm picturing a cartoon superhero!

Did spy shop peddle phony DOT placards?

From the Daily News:

The feds have uncovered something other than cloak-and-dagger stuff going on at the Queens Spy Shop.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted a shipment of 1,000 counterfeit hologram logos for New York City Department of Transportation parking permits sent from India to the East Elmhurst store, which sells high-tech surveillance equipment. DOT issues only about 500 legitimate permits.

An airway bill which described the contents of the shipment only halfway truthfully as "plastic pouches" didn't fool the agents who made the seizure on Aug. 18 at Kennedy Airport, according to a search warrant affidavit unsealed Thursday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The counterfeit items were indeed clear plastic sleeves with the official-looking DOT hologram embossed on the surface and is used as a cover for the parking permit which authorizes employees to parking just about anywhere in the city.

The Queens Spy Shop on Astoria Blvd. is not an authorized vendor of the parking pass, Homeland Security special agent Rosanna Licitra stated in the affidavit.

"There is probable cause to believe that the (Queens Spy Shop) manufactures counterfeit NYCDOT permit parking passes," which makes it a federal crime to traffic in goods using a counterfeit mark, the agent stated.

The spy shop is operated by Jonel Van Demark who was charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors with bank fraud last July.

Judge's wife abuses parking placard

From the Daily News:

For weeks, a green Honda Accord has been parked nearly every day on Queens Blvd. near 83rd Ave. in Kew Gardens in Queens, N.Y., neighbors say, but its driver never feeds the meter.
She never moves for alternate-side parking. And she never seems to get a ticket.

That’s because Ellen Raffaele — a mid-level Queens Board of Elections employee with deep ties to the borough’s Democratic machine — is improperly using the official parking placard issued to her husband, a judge.

Queens Supreme Court Justice Thomas Raffaele is entitled to a state-issued parking placard as a sitting jurist — but only if he’s using the car for official court business.

Letting his wife use the placard — which says “POLICE” beside the seal of the State of New York’s judicial branch — is a blatant abuse of the perk and one that infuriated people desperately seeking parking in the busy municipal district near the main Queens courthouse, borough hall and other city offices.

Parking placard perk ends for CB members

From the NY Post:

Community board leaders are fuming that Mayor Bloomberg is about to yank their parking placards.

On Feb. 1, the city is planning to eliminate a precious perk that New York’s 59 community-board chairs have enjoyed for years — a pass that lets them park anywhere for free for three hours.

The board leaders are not ready to give up their treasured passes quietly.

“They got my service for 28 years. I think it’s quite insulting, whoever made this decision,” said Queens Community Board 7 Chair Gene Kelty.

“When the city asks me to come into the city [for a meeting], I’m not coming in,” he said. “You can send a car or I’m not coming in.”

While the passes are being nixed for volunteer board leaders, paid district managers will keep theirs.

Rules don't apply to them

From the NY Post:

This city politician has plenty of drive — he just has trouble parking.

Brooklyn Councilman Steve Levin, whose coveted official parking placard was pulled by the Bloomberg administration in April after he racked up $630 in unpaid summonses, is in a fine mess again.

Levin, a protégé of embattled Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez, has piled up 10 new tickets totaling $595 in fines and late fees since his placard was briefly taken away, according to the city’s records.

The placard, among the prized perks of city officials, was returned to Levin the same month — after he paid off eight delinquent parking tickets.

“When you settle all of your tickets, they allow you to renew your placard,” he told The Post. The pass entitles drivers to park almost anywhere, except at hydrants and bus stops.

Yet that still wasn’t good enough for Levin.

Of his 10 new tickets — all racked up since his parking placard was renewed — two were for being caught running red-light cameras. The rest were for illegal parking, with four during street-cleaning hours; three meter infractions; and one in a no-standing zone.