It's a potential BID-ding war.
The Adams administration is considering granting the 34th Street Partnership, a business improvement district that manages public space in and around Bryant Park and Herald and Greeley squares, the power to issue parking tickets — the first BID to receive that permission.
But it's clear that the proposal is still being debated; early on Wednesday, Streetsblog noticed the proposed Department of Finance rule change and public hearing announcement on a city website. But when we asked about it, the agency promptly took it down.
"It was mistakenly published and retracted," agency spokesman Ryan Lavis told Streetsblog late on Wednesday. "DOF is continuing to review the proposal."
But before the city pulled back, an representative for the business improvement district was gung-ho about the proposed power surge.
"Since its inception in 1992, the 34th Street Partnership’s security staff has always served as unarmed eyes and ears for the NYPD," 34th Street Partnership spokesman Joe Carella told Streetsblog in a statement. "Their presence helps ensure safety and civility in one if the city’s busiest corridors. Enabling these guards to issue parking tickets is an additional tool for them to achieve these goals, while allowing the NYPD to focus on more serious issues."
The DOF's rule change hearing notice may have been pulled down, but the underlying motivation of the proposed rule remains online (or will until the agency reads this story). It said that the move to grant a private, business-funded group the power to issue parking tickets was a response to unlicensed street hails and other parking violations in the BID's service area.
Before retracting the statement, the DOF also said it hoped to extend parking enforcement authority to the Spring Creek Towers Public Safety Department and SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University cops.
Traffic enforcement is one of the NYPD's most challenging jobs, with agents frequently harassed for doing their job of holding scofflaws accountable. Traffic agents are frequently the target of physical abuse, as well. The agents have pushed to be outfitted with body cams because of the threats to their well-being.
In fact, violence against traffic agents was one of the reasons cited by the NYPD when it testified in opposition to a proposal by Council Member Lincoln Restler to allow regular New Yorkers to report drivers who illegally park in bus or bike lanes.
The motivation behind efforts to broaden the writing of tickets beyond the police is, however, clear.
A recent study documented the police department's "systemic failure" to response to illegal parking complaints submitted through the city's 311 system — and suggested that NYPD response times to parking complaints are rapid to a level that suggests fraud, negligence or both.
Officials with the 34th Street Partnership may feel the NYPD should focus on "more serious issues," but they evidently find illegal parking to be a serious enough issue to require the involvement of their security staff.
Besides illegal street hails, parking violations can include blocking loading zones, crosswalks, sidewalks and bike lanes — all serious violations affecting day-to-day businesses operations and safety around the parks under the 34th Street Partnership's purview.
Funding by fees paid by property owners in their service areas, New York City's 76 business improvement districts "deliver services and improvements above and beyond those typically provided by the city," according to the website of the Department of Small Business Services, which lists "street cleaning and maintenance" and "public safety" among those services.
However, no BID has been given the power to issue parking tickets, a major function of the NYPD.
City law officially prohibits the city from reducing its own services because of a BID's existence, but NYPD's parking enforcement is already notoriously miniscule.
We'll update this story if anything changes.
