An example of the "shame sticker." (Photo by Kilgub via Flickr)
(New York — Kathleen Horan, WNYC) Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he plans to veto legislation that would put an end to the Sanitation Department’s so-called ‘shame’ stickers on cars. The mayor said he supports the 25-year-old practice of plastering a fluorescent sticker on cars that violate alternate side parking rules.
“I think it’s one of the less productive things that could be legislated,” Bloomberg explained. “Stickers are an enforcement tool that have helped to keep our streets clean and if you take them away, there’s no reason to believe that we won’t go back to the dirty streets that we had before stickers were put in there.”
The City Council approved legislation last week that would ban the stickers, saying they unfairly punish drivers before they’re allowed to prove their innocence… and because they’re too difficult to remove.
The Sanitation Department has said the threat of the stickers has helped increase compliance.
That’s our City Council for you. Instead of focusing on safety, traffic deaths, or public transit, they focus on ways to make parking easier for drivers who don’t want to follow the rules.
Don’t want a sticker and a ticket? Move your car like the rest of us do.
Or don’t have a car at all, like the majority of us do.
While Chris Quinn, David Greenfield and Jimmy Vacca are making life easier for poor, persecuted parking scofflaws, Deshane Santana, Mathieu Lefevre and dozens of others are getting mowed down for having the temerity to think that pedestrians and cyclists should have safe passage on our streets. How about some justice for them?
Or keep your windows rolled down. Watch for confused looks.