THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR

WPCNR THE PARKING NEWS. By John F. Bailey. March 24, 2006: Public Safety Aides armed with their registration-registering hand-held computer scanners to identify offending parked cars,  handed out a series of $15 tickets along Westmoreland Avenue and Intervale Streets this week. 

According to Thomas McLaren, the President of C. G. Swackhamer, Inc., (the lumber company headquartered on Westmoreland Avenue area since 1942), there is no public parking in the area. For years, he says,  workers in the businesses on the strip, consisting of towing companies, collision repair shops, the Westchester ARC building, warehouses, a meat packer, and some offices have been allowed to exceed the unmetered street time limits (For years marked 1 hour, and recently changed to 3 hours on Westmoreland and continue to be1 hour on side streets) because there is no other place to park. McLaren told WPCNR the last parking ticket he had heard of handed out on the street was six months ago, until Thursday when one of his workers received a parking ticket.  Photo, WPCNR News.

This week, reports Larry Smith, Controller for Bearings & Motive Specialties Co. on 90 Westmoreland slightly down the block that policy changed.

The city Public Safety Aides are enforcing the 3 hour and 1 hour limits.  Even if a worker moves his vehicle to another space within the area, as Mr. Smith did, they still get a ticket Smith told WPCNR:

“The new parking enforcement group has begun a ticketing blitz on Westmoreland and adjoining Intervale Streets,” Smith said.  “The car registrations are being scanned and regardless of whether the car leaves for an extended period, and returns to the neighborhood such as our delivery car, if the car is anywhere in the neighborhood when the enforcement officer returns they are ticketed.”

Westmoreland Avenue. Bearings & Motive Specialties Co is on the right. Parking sign on left, indicates “3 Hour Parking, 7:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. Photo, WPCNR News./

Smith says this has stunned his work force: “This aggressive policy on the part of the city is putting an extreme hardship on these mostly small businesses. None of our employees can afford $15 per day parking fines, nor can our business afford to subsidize parking for them. Further, there is no alternative parking in the immediate area. The nearest city facility is at the White Plains Public Library, several (3 long) blocks away.”

City PSAs  Strike Without Warning.

Smith said the city did not inform the businesses in any way that the 3-hour and 1 hour regulations were going to be strictly enforced to the letter before he received two $15 tickets this week. The first ticket he received was in the afternoon, after he had parked his car in a different space in the same area, from when he had parked in the morning. (He had gone home for lunch.)

The Law on Intervale. One Hour Parking, 7:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. Park at your own risk. Photo, WPCNR News

He said he was not the only victim.  He reports “a long line of cars on both sides of Westmoreland” all of whom had received tickets. He said that Bank Street Commons (apartments) on Bank had been contacted about employees of his and other businesses using the empty places in Bank Street lots as an interim solution. Smith said he had been told they had to keep the spaces, even those unoccupied, to fill city parking availability requirements for the apartment units.

One Hour Parking on the Swackhammer corner off Westmoreland. Photo, WPCNR News.

McLaren, the Swackhammer owner  told WPCNR, “None of the people parking on this street are on welfare. They’re all hardworking people, working to put food on the table. There is no public parking in the area. Where are they supposed to park? I don’t feel I should be paying them (my employees) while they are out moving their cars.”

WPCNR observes some businesses have private parking lots on the street, but still there is overflow and workers park on the street. Until this week, they could.

 The Mayor’s Office Unavailable for Clarification of the Policy. 

The Mayor’s Office and the Department of Parking were not available for comment when contacted by WPCNR NewsCalls slightly after 5 P.M. today.

WPCNR is trying to clarify if the  parking ticket blitz policy of ticketing vehicles, even those returning to the same area  to park again (much like New York City cars shifting to another side of the street on street cleaningdays), after leaving a parking place,  extended to the downtown area where parking is metered on the street. 

 If the Westmoreland “no return” enforcement policy is the new model that would imply that participants could not “feed one meter” in the downtown past the 1 hour limit indicated on meters.

If vehicles in the Westmoreland “industrial area without meters,” were ticketed when they returned  to the neighborhood, that would imply a ticket should be written up if a vehicle parked in another parking meter spot in the downtown after having used up his/her first hour when their registration popped up on the Public Safety Aide’s hand-held computer registration scanner. WPCNR will pursue clarification on the matter. According to Smith’s information, the hand-held scanners do not differentiate by location.

Smith, after speaking with a Department of Parking representative, said “Due to the fact that there are no retail businesses here, (in the Westmoreland, Intervale area), I cannot understand the city’s enforcement logic, which, according to the parking authority rep is to provide everyone with a fair chance to park. Nobody parks here except employees. Most people in White Plains don’t even know that our street exists.”

WPCNR FOR THE RECORD. March 23, 2006: Here is a text of the statement on the school budget made by Marjorie Davies at the Public Hearing on the School Budget at Education House Monday evening.

Marjorie Davies, Co-President, White Plains League of Women Voters addressing the Board of Education. Photo, WPCNR News

Good evening, I am Marjorie Davies, co-president of the White Plains League of Women Voters.

I want to thank the Board of Education for this opportunity to speak tonight on the Proposed School Budget for the 2006-2007 school year. I also thank the school district for the opportunity for community representatives, including two members of the League to learn about the budget and participate in the budget development process through the Annual Budget Committee.

We are fortunate to live in a community whose school budget voters support the efforts to educate our city’s children by passing the school budget. The League recognizes the challenges in educating a diverse student population and the need to maintain small class sizes. The district is justifiably proud of its efforts and success in meeting this challenge. League members often cite this very diversity as a reason for selecting White Plains as the place to live.

Having expressed our support for the schools, we also wish to share our concern for the future if the district loses the support of the voters because of tax increases approaching 10%. Recognizing that salaries and fringe benefits constitute over 76% of district expenses, we urge the Board of Education to take a hard look at future contract negotiations. The overall salary of 4.2% (although lower than most years) exceeds increases received by most of us. We also hope the Board will continue to explore ways to tie increases to performance.

Likewise, health care costs need to be borne to a greater extend by employees either by a larger contribution to the premium or by an increased co-pay to reduce the overall cost of coverage. These steps reflect a growing trend for both current employees and retirees.

The concern of the League of Women Voters over the years for the need to evaluate the effectiveness of school district programs continues. Although there is discussion of this issue, we do not see how the stated priorities of the Board in “Utilizing data in the decision-making process” or to “Undertake program evaluation for cost effectiveness and efficiency” are reflected in this budget. As we said last year, there is an urgent need to be sure the time and energy of the staff is actually producing measurable gains by the students. Overlapping layers of teachers and programs need to be examined also.

We hope the district is involved in lobbying efforts on many fronts to achieve better management of the Teachers’ Retirement System which has required huge increases in contributions.

In regard to the proposed bond vote for capital improvements, the League urges the school district to give serious thought to ways to better inform the public before placing this before the voters. At present, we do not have enough information to make a statement either for or against any of the proposals.

Again, the League of Women Voters is pleased with the goal of the school district to educate all children and with the continued partnership with the community in budget development.