Encouraged by Response to ‘Ticket Blitz’
Complaints — Changes Promised
By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Eagle
BAY RIDGE — With so many drivers ticked-off here about what they complain is an out-of-control traffic ticket blitz, a roadmap may be in the works to halt the troubles after Councilman Vincent Gentile met with NYPD Traffic Enforcement Chief Michael Scagnelli.
“I recently had a one-to-one talk with Chief Scagnelli of Traffic Enforcement about the agency’s aggressive ticketing blitz,” Councilman Gentile told Community Board 10 at its recent meeting at the Norwegian Christian Home. “I told him about the double parking violators who get tickets while waiting a moment for a space to open, those who pull over to let a disabled person out or in, and those who parked a little over a corner white line.”
Of the infamous “Kris Kringle kalamity kase” as it was called that targeted community organizer Chip Cafiero, dressed as the Christmas legend during a Third Avenue holiday promotion visit, Gentile said, “I told him about the Santa Claus ticketing incident for double parking. He was shocked a little about that.
“I told him of people parking legally on 86th Street while road construction work was going on, and how they were ticketed when no parking signs were placed as the construction work site moved,” Gentile said. “He said to me, ‘You’re 100 percent right.’ He told me that he would call the inspectors and tell them to stop.”
This would represent a departure from the aggressive ticketing that caused outrage in Bay Ridge and elsewhere, where complaints were aired at merchant organizations and civic group meetings and at public forums held by Gentile in Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst.
About 8,000 parking tickets were issued within the 68th Precinct covering Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights from early 2008 to early 2009, according to DOT statistics and the precinct, a slight drop from the previous year but still high.
However, city revenue was fattened as it raked in a record $686 million in parking fines last year, according to city Finance Department records released in the mayor’s new budget, which anticipates a $93 million increase in 2009 from parking fines, the biggest jump in six years.
The city plans to hire 220 additional traffic agents under its new budget, which Gentile told the New York Post earlier this month represents “the smoking gun” to ratch up revenue through traffic tickets.
Scagnelli told Gentile that he would ask traffic enforcement agents to use “reasonable, common sense and prudence” rather than mass ticketing without regard to a circumstance that clearly does not warrant a summons. “I have his word on this,” Gentile told the board. “I’m really optimistic for the first time about this.”
Watch Out! Parking Now 75 Cents Per Hour
The councilman, who has been hailed by parking ticket solutions advocates for his initiatives and leadership on this issue, noted that the city Department of Transportation changed metered parking time limits on April 27 from 30 to 20 minutes for 25 cents, catching many drivers by surprise. What was 50 cents for an hour’s parking is now 75 cents.
President Jim Clark of the Bay Ridge Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District had recently told of the many complaints he got from avenue merchants about the change, noting that DOT workers traveled the avenue to change the meters. “Everybody is unhappy about this,” he said.
District Manager Josephine Beckmann of Board 10 said her office got many complaints from merchants and shoppers. The DOT meter hike is the first increase since 1992. While Third and Fifth avenues have single space parking meters, 86th Street has Muni-Meters.
“I’m drafting a bill in the city council to tell DOT to notify us of any such changes first. They did this parking time limit change in a cloak of secrecy so no one would notice it,” Gentile told the board. The DOT increase was enacted and announced as a means to help the city’s troubled financial state.
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