Gentile Introduces Bill To Lift Meter Regulations On All Holidays

By on June 4, 2012  Traffic & Transit
Jun 042012
 

Source: Wikipedia Commons

Did you ever wonder why you still have to pay for street parking on days when alternate side parking is suspended?

Last Thursday, City Councilman Vincent Gentile introduced legislation that would make feeding the meter during holidays no longer necessary.

According to a press release put out by Gentile’s office on Friday, Local Law # 868 “would suspend parking meter regulations citywide on all legal and religious holidays,” – days on which the city already suspends street cleaning rules.

“If you don’t have to move your car, why do you have to feed the meter?,” Councilman Gentile asked. “If alternate side parking is suspended on holidays, why aren’t parking meters also suspended? It doesn’t make sense and it’s confusing.”

Touting the bill as part of a “Common Sense Agenda,” Gentile’s office described it as “just another step in putting a stop to the City’s never-ending “gotcha” mentality,” bringing clarity to the current laws concerning holiday parking, which they’ve tagged as both “confused and perplexing.”

“It is my responsibility to make sure that residents are safeguarded against being made targets of ticketing agents who want to close the city’s budget gap on the backs of taxpayers,” the Councilman continued. “Instead of making people partners in keeping our streets safe, they are being treated like ATM’s for the city’s insatiable coffers.”

It is not known how much revenue the city would potentially lose under such a program.

Based on what we know now, what do you think? Would the added convenience for residents outweigh any loss of income for the city?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=676886740 Ed Unneland

    Alternate-side (to make room for street sweeping) and metered parking (to rotate parking in high-demand commercial areas) are different from each other. The city makes accommodations for alternative-side because there are a number of religious observances that tend to keep people close to home; in those circumstances, the city tries not to make life difficult for people who tend to be law-abiding and tend to take care of their property. On the other hand, if your attachment to a particular observance, like Simchat Torah, Eid-ul-fitr, or Great and Holy Thursday as reckoned by the Orthodox Christian calendar, is sufficiently tenuous to allow you to drive your car to the commercial areas where parking is in high demand, then you should not benefit from a “freebie” that day.