Dear Council Members:

As a spouse of a NYC public school teacher, I appreciate Council Member Baez’s wish to make the lives of NYC teachers easier.

But giving NYC teachers the privilege to park a private car anywhere (which authentic placards usually do, despite their explicit restrictions) would do far more harm to the city than it would help teachers.

Cars’ air pollution is a known factor in New York City’s shamefully high rates of childhood asthma. The overbroad parking privileges Int 894 would provide would encourage many teachers to drive who would not otherwise, and would increase air pollution in the very vicinity of our most vulnerable residents–school children. And cars’ air pollution doesn’t only contribute to asthma, it has been shown to cause chromosomal damage in children’s lungs. That may implicate it in cancer and chronic illnesses.

At this time of environmental and economic crisis, the City, as well as the State and U.S. for that matter, must not encourage people to drive their cars more, especially when viable alternatives exist, like in most of New York City.

Other New Yorkers have provided other strong arguments against the bill at http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/01/27/city-council-hard-at-work-on-pro-parking-bills/

Teachers need respect and a safe environment, and some perks here and there are certainly warranted too. But this bill is not the way to help them or anyone.

Please immediately withdraw your sponsorship from this good-intentioned but potentially very harmful proposed law.

How about giving car-sharing some free on-street parking instead? This would lower the cost for participants and encourage still more families to live without a car.

Also, Zipcar usage is charged a 5% car rental tax on top of the regular 8%+ sales tax. I’m guessing this was meant to get a few more bucks out of tourists, but it’s counterproductive to charge it to residents who may factor this into the decision to car share vs. buy a one-family car.

No, she’s craven and is serving her /real/ constituency, the “public servants” who’ll scratch her back, during and after her tenure in the council.

She probably needs teachers’ union support for something coming up, or owes them for whatever reason.

I can’t leave my car parked with the windows cracked anymore, because the wind will blow the ticket around; this limits when I can leave my dog in the car. If I’m not looking closely, and leave the ticket upside-down, I’ll get nailed.

There’s also a problem whereby on long avenue blocks, the cops will nail you immediately after parking, while you are walking to the muni-meter to pay for the space.

People who attempt to cheat do it by leaving thirty separate muni-meter receipts in the dashboard, so the cop can’t read them all, and has to assume the truck’s legally parked.

These things are easy to fix, though. 897 is part of it.

You are correct. The city includes the market value of employee parking as a taxable fringe benefit, if that market value exceeds the excludable limit of (I think) $220.

More generally, you’d think that any parking permit that’s not required for the job itself but just makes commuting by car easier is, under federal law, taxable income. How can we get the IRS to go after placard abusers in that way?