By Bob Friedrich, Glen Oaks Village
Your Sept. 4 editorial, “Less is Less,” regarding the reduction in teacher parking placards was on target. Most teachers work in schools in neighborhoods not easily accessible to mass transit commutes. Many teachers arrive early and leave late, often at night, when walking alone might be dangerous. As a result, they depend on the placards.
The city's short-sighted decision to reduce them by 80 percent is callous. Every teacher should be offered a parking placard and allowed to park in designated spots on a first-come, first-serve basis. Designated parking is already limited to streets near schools and is not in effect on weekends, holidays and summers and after 4 p.m., causing little disruption to neighborhoods, but greatly helping teachers.
If city administrators had to reduce the number of parking placards, wouldn't a better solution be to reduce them only in schools located in areas with quick-and-easy access to subways? A teacher can more easily commute, for example, to a school in downtown Flushing than one in Glen Oaks Village. Would it be fair to reduce the parking placards evenly between those two neighborhood schools?
As president of Glen Oaks Village, a co-op of 10,000 people, many of whom are teachers, I assure you that the parking permits given to them are greatly appreciated and take one less worry out of their difficult job.
As a City Council candidate in next year's Democratic primary, I will seek to bring some innovative thinking to this subject by making sure a more sensible approach is used to limit parking placards so our teachers are not hurt by these City Hall decisions.
