UFT Fights Mayor's Plan to Reduce Parking Permits
[I hope this letter proves interesting. It was sent from UFT President Randi Weingarten to Mayor Bloomberg on Jan. 4 objecting to his inclusion of teachers in his plan to reduce by 20 percent the number of parking permits issued to all city employees.]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg:
It was deeply troubling to learn – through media coverage – of your plan to reduce by 20 percent the number of parking permits issued to all city employees.
On the numerous occasions we have raised the need for more parking for teachers, we have been repeatedly told that this is a collective bargaining issue. If increasing parking availability is a bargaining issue, then clearly, reduction is as well. Now you have apparently chosen, by fiat, to move forward a plan that would penalize the hardworking men and women who teach our city's kids.
Teachers in New York City public schools receive permits that enable them to park on a portion of their school block, during school hours only. Taking away these permits at a time when we're making strides to attract the best and the brightest to teaching (the NYC education workforce is the highest-qualified it's been since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s) makes absolutely no sense. Many city schools are difficult to reach by public transportation, many teachers travel between schools and available parking is clearly one incentive to attract teachers to high-needs schools.
Teachers do not clog areas such as lower Manhattan. Teachers are not abusers of parking permits, and to publicly suggest that they are is deeply troubling. Holding abusers of parking privileges accountable for their actions should not be done at the expense of teachers whose jobs are hard enough already.
I urge you to reconsider your position and would like to meet with you on this as soon as possible.
Randi Weingarten
UFT President
Bookmark/Search this post with:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
Thanks for the Streetsblog link.
Submitted by Steve Perez on 8 January 2008 - 2:48pm.
What I don't hear you saying is what teachers who have to actually commute to or from areas of the city not well served by mass transit are supposed to do. Not everyone lives and works in Manhattan. If you're a teacher living in Brooklyn and you're assigned to a school in the Bronx, should you spend hours commuting each way by train and bus? Teachers buy houses in the suburbs, just like everyone else, because they're more affordable - are we saying those experienced teachers should leave for suburban teaching jobs?
That's who's using the parking permits. Teachers already work long days. If you pile on top of that long commutes to the outer boroughs or from the suburbs then you're creating a real disincentive to being a teacher because you're telling people they need to spend every waking moment and then some either at work or commuting to and from work. And let's not even get into carrying books and students papers from multiple classes around.
At the end of the day, for some long commutes to or from areas of the city ill-served by mass transit, driving is the only real option.
If we start with the premise that parking should not be a perk,
Submitted by Daniel Millstone on 8 January 2008 - 6:02pm.
we could end up able to make allowances where appropriate for individual cases. When Ms. Weingarten fails to observe the misuse of parking perks, any case for allowances is weakened.
For example in this Streetblog post the sidewalk in front on Manhattan's PS 161, (Convent Ave & 135th; unserved by public transportation?)is clogged with teacher and staff cars.
If you have a taste for this sort of thing, try also Uncivil Servants which documents perceived parking abuses by public employees.
It's interesting, Steve, but it's not a position I'd be proud
of.
I have a great deal of affection for the UFT and significant respect for the intelligence and good sense of its president Randi Weingarten. As I see it, little of her intelligence and none of her common sense is reflected in the letter you have reproduced above.
Streetsblog has a fairly zingy response to Ms. Weingarten's letter which those interested should read.
Should free parking on NYC streets be a job perk? Should teachers be encouraged to use private automobiles to commute to work? Have there never occured instances in which teacher parking is done improperly? Are there alternatives to free parking which NYC officials and teachers should be thinking about? Awareness of none of these questions, I am sorry to say, is reflected in Ms. Weingarten's ill-considered letter.