Complaints Come From Heights,
Sheepshead Bay, Bay Ridge
By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BAY RIDGE — “You can’t do that. It’s not right!” complains a driver getting a parking ticket. It is a sore scene repeated many times daily and one that Councilman Vincent Gentile (D-Bay Ridge), called the city’s parking solutions “champion,” has worked hard on to solve.
Now there are four new bills being introduced into the City Council by his fellow champion and colleague from Queens, Council Member John Liu, chair of the council’s transportation committee who has often spoken on traffic and transit issues in Brooklyn.
“A parking ticket is supposed to be an accusation of lawbreaking. Unfortunately, the current system renders a guilty verdict once the summons is issued,” said Liu during a council oversight hearing last week.
“Unless the accused provides irrefutable evidence of innocence, the judge has no choice but to find guilt, guilt often based on nothing more than the sworn affidavit of the issuing agent,” Liu said. “This system is inherently unfair and simply cannot stand.”
The city’s responsibility, he said, is not “to presume guilt and lay it on the ticket recipient to prove innocence” but to provide its agents with the tools to make the city’s case, Liu said. “Change is in order in the way the city adjudicates parking tickets.”
While claims of unfair summonses come from all over Brooklyn, the complaints are loudest and more frequent in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn Heights (one of the most ticketed areas in Brooklyn) and Bay Ridge. Liu has held parking solution forums, talked with traffic enforcement supervisors such as Chief Michael Scagnelli, and introduced and co-sponsored ticket easement legislation, such as the new bills.
Bills Seek To Change
Agents’ Treatment of Drivers
One new bill would seek photographic proof of what a traffic agent identifies as a parking offense. The “Photo Ticket Bill” (Intro 886-A) requires photos to be part of an issued summons as evidence for the city’s case.
“We need to make sure that parking tickets are being given out judiciously and that when an innocent person is issued a ticket in error, the decks aren’t stacked against them when they try to fight it,” said Bronx Councilman James Vacca, the bill’s sponsor. That, he explained, would make clear innocence or guilty, and help a judge decide more efficiently.
At the hearing, a vigorous protest came from Assistant Commissioner Susan Petito of NYPD Intergovernmental Affairs. “By far the most important reason not to enact this bill is the tremendous damage it would do to the validity of all parking summonses issued, not only by our traffic enforcement agents but also by police officers and enforcement officers of other agencies.”
If the bill became law, she said, it would cost the city about $60 million to put into effect over a period of five to seven years. However, many council members disagree with her cost estimate, said Liu.
Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder’s bill (Intro 1017) would require the Department of Transportation to post notice in a neighborhood and on its web site of any temporary or permanent change in parking restrictions. This must be done one week in advance of the changes. DOT Deputy Commissioner David Woloch said this would require extra staffing and work.
For motorcycles parked at credit card-accepting Muni Meters, Intro 980 by Manhattan Council Member Jessica Lappin would require a new DOT plan to secure receipts on motorcycles parked at Muni Meters. DOT officials said they already have a plan to offer free plastic pouches so that bikers can display their printouts.
Intro 901, sponsored by Liu, would require the DOT to set aside 10 parking spaces, or 10 percent of the parking spaces in city-owned parking lots and garages, for the use of car-sharing programs. “We do support this legislation,” Woloch of the DOT said.
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