Senator Klein is joined by others to Blast City Dept. of Finance

    State Senator Jeff Klein was joined by City Council Traffic and Transportation Chair Jimmy Vaxxa, Assembly members Mike Benedetto, Marcos Crespo and local civic leaders and merchants to blast the New York City Department of Finance for not enforcing city truck overnight parking rules on local residential streets. The fine for illegal overnight truck parking on residential streets use to be $65.00 which meant that it wound up cheaper for truck drivers to park overnight on residential streets than reserve a hotel room or park off street in paid lots.

    In 2010 responding to hundreds of constituent complains about illegally parked tractor-trailers in their neighborhoods, Sen. Klein, along with Assemblyman Benedetto and Councilman Vacca, introduced and passed legislation to drastically increase the fines for trucks that illegally parked overnight in residential areas. The law increased fines from $65 to $250 for first-time offenders and from $65 to $500 for second or repeat-offenders. 

    Senator Klein's office estimated that an average of 238 tractor trailer trucks park overnight in the 34th State Senate District alone, which of properly ticketed could generate over $3,500,000.00 in additional revenue to the city from the 34th district alone.   

   In order to fully implement the new parking fines, the New York City Department of Finance must print new parking tickets that reflect the increased fee schedule. However, over the past 12 months, the Department has refused to print these new tickets, resulting in near-total lack of enforcement. The Department of Finance has committed only to “exploring whether [they] can make an alteration to handwritten tickets,” and has, in the meantime, relied solely on enforcement officers to voluntarily write-in the additional fine. The Department of Finance has not sent out any instruction or advisement to NYPD regarding the new fines.

    Given that the problem of illegal overnight truck parking is widespread across the outer-boroughs, the total number of lost revenue could be much greater. According to numbers obtained by the Office of Senator Klein, the Department of Finance issued over 93,000 tickets for illegal overnight commercial parking in the most recent fiscal year. Under a conservative estimate, if even one third of these tickets were written to tractor-trailers with the additional fine, NYC could reap an additional $8.83 million if the Department of Finance simply printed new tickets that enabled fuller enforcement. 

    Councilman Vacca said that the problem is not only here in the Bronx, but citywide in the outer boroughs.

Assembly members Benedetto and Crespo said that the new overnight truck parking rules shows a total disregard for the residents of the entire city, and they gave law enforcement the tools needed to stop this illegal overnight truck parking which is not being enforced and depriving city residents of revenue that is much needed now.

   This legislation was passed two years ago and the city Department of Finance still has not changed the summons form, which I was told by Councilman Vacca is reordered every few months.

   Mayor Bloomberg take note of this..

Left - Senator Klein, Councilman Vacca, Assemblymen Benedetto, and Crespo along with Community and business members
Right - Example of just how many and where trucks are parking on overnight residential streets.