Brooklyn motorists beware – cash-strapped city officials are bent on summonsing you mercilessly.
That’s the warning this week coming from Community Board 11 Chair Bill Guarinello.
“This is the way the city is going to balance their budget,” Guarinello told members of Community Board 11 recently meeting inside the Holy Family Home on 84th Street.
With the fallout from Wall Street’s economic meltdown predicted to only get worse, Guarinello said that the coming ticket blitz is “going to be the tip of the iceberg.”
“If you blink, the onus is going to be on you,” he said.
On Wednesday, City Councilmember Vincent Gentile sponsored a special parking ticket forum at the Moose Lodge on 18th Avenue to help educate the public on how to fight unfair parking tickets.
For critics like Guarinello, the forum couldn’t have come soon enough.
“This is the traffic agents’ bread and butter,” he declared. [But] you can stick up for yourself.”
Two years ago, an arbitrator found that the commander of the 75th Precinct in East New York imposed monthly, quarterly and annual traffic summons quotas on police officers in violation of state labor law.
DOT traffic enforcement officers are also employees of the New York City Police Department.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg dismissed the findings at the time and denied that a quota system even existed.
Nonetheless, Guarinello is warning his Brooklyn neighbors that “quotas will be doubled.”
Many argue that faulty DOT signage often makes it tough for motorists to follow the law.
In areas where parking signs appear to contradict each other, the DOT says motorists must adhere to the most restrictive directives.
‘No stopping’ signs are the most restrictive – prohibiting motorists from idling or picking/unloading both passengers and packages in designated areas.
‘No standing’ signs allow motorists to pick up/unload passengers, while ‘no parking’ signs allow motorists to pick up and unload both passengers and packages.
Motorists are permitted to park at a broken parking meter for up to one hour.
Since November 2005, motorists no longer have to feed the meter on Sundays.
