Budget meetings are not generally fun, but these days they are more depressing than usual. Last night was take 3 of 5 public budget meetings at Village Hall.
On the agenda was public works, Friends of Nyack, and the Nyack Center. For an hour the discussion was between the Trustees and Superintendent of Maintenance, Victor Overton. The focus was on a few cost saving ideas like changing the alternate side parking hours from 2am-6am to 2am-10am, and not picking up trash for non-residential activities such as the Nyack Boat Club, houses of worship, the Housing Authority, the Nyack Center and Head Start.
Also discussed was picking up “white goods”, the large items like appliances, less often. Currently they are picked up every Friday. One resident said that when she moved from California it amazed her that bulk trash was picked up every Friday, because it only happened a couple times a year where she came from.
The Board didn’t even begin discussion of Victor’s equipment list proposals. They will deal with that another time. In the end, Victor Overton was a bit deflated, but several public members followed up, along with the Mayor and Trustees, saying how much appreciation there was for the incredibly responsive pick up service.
The Mayor has asked for a 5% decrease in the department’s budget, and Victor was unsure that was possible. The discussion ended with ideas like that brought up by Trustee Richard Kavesh with unpaid time off for the department’s 11 employees. Nothing was decided but it is clearly a difficult situation.
The Friends of the Nyacks was a quick discussion, with chair Deborah Darbonne asking the Village not to cut the $1,000 budget for the Mostly Music program in Memorial Park. She said that for the $1,000 that comes from the Village, it leverages $10,000 in funding from sources that requires Village participation. So the whole program would have to be shut down if the Village cut the funding.
I think the rationale for extending the parking hours was on cost savings — not revenue generation (although I had that same first reaction!) If they extend the hours to 10am, the ticket givers won’t have to be paid to work a night shift to give overnight tickets.
At least that’s what I’m told was the thinking.
Unless, they change all of the signs to say no parking until 10am, which will eat up whatvever cost savings this idea might bring!
I know a join a chorus when I say Nyack’s parking situation is getting completely out of hand. What “cost savings” could be achieved by extending the overnight parking hours to 2-10 am? Or, by cost savings do you mean increased revenue that would be generated giving tickets to unfortunate motorists who have no idea why they can park on one side of the street but not the other until 10 am in the morning? Presumably, signs would have to be changed all over the village to reflect the new hours, which must cost something or at least take away from other work that could be done. If the parking enforcers aren’t working from 6-11 am — now the only hours where you can park anywhere for free — they would need to be paid extra as well.
And what possible municipal rationale could there be for extending overnight parking hours by five hours (which I believe are now 3-6 am, not 2-6 am, unless that has also changed recently)? We know it’s not for street cleaning; I see a truck maybe once every two weeks, if that much. So, it’s another abuse of the parking ordinances to simply make money off the backs of those who try to park in our village, and in this case it seems aimed squarely at Nyack’s own residents who don’t have the luxury of a parking space and already have to move their cars every single night, as well as to the merchants who are open early in the morning and whose customers now will be restricted to one side of the street for no apparent reason.
This manipulation and abuse of parking ordinances is unconscionable and needs to stop. Already Nyack is far more onerous than even New York City, with its meters going until 9 pm and overnight parking that makes residents move their cars every night (in the city it’s twice a week).