Last week, the City Council voted to send a home rule message to the state Senate. It is asking for the right to allow residential parking permits to be issued, for a fee, by neighborhood. This plan is nothing more than another tax on residents.
Every day, it gets harder and harder to make ends meet. Property assessments increase, parking fines increase, meter fees increase, water rates and gas bills get higher and higher. We keep getting nickel-and-dimed to death living in New York City. The only thing we have left in South Brooklyn is the right to park on residential blocks without a tax or fee. The idea that we would now have to pay a yearly fee to park on our streets is ludicrous.
I understand the daily struggle we all face to find parking, but we need solutions that do not include forcing New Yorkers to pay even more to the city. They pay enough. They pay every day, every week, and every month, and it’s time we stand up and say no.
In addition to the implications on every individual’s wallet, we cannot ignore the practical implications on businesses. To tell businesses that the only people who can reasonably find parking around their stores are the people that live next door, is simply another jobs-killing measure from a group that has never met a tax increase or business-inhibiting regulation that it didn’t like.
Finally, for a program like this to be put in place, it would require another bloated government agency to issue, enforce, and regulate these fee-based parking permits. Is that what we really need, when city agencies are cutting back — another branch of parking enforcement? I say no. We cannot create more government at a time when we are talking about cutting essential services. That’s just wrong.
I will continue to oppose this plan, as I feel that we pay enough, our businesses need more help, and our government doesn’t need to be inflated.
Marty Golden, a Republican, represents Bay Ridge in the state Senate.
