Top News Stories
UFT, city reach parking agreement
Sep 12, 2008 11:41 AM
Mayor Bloomberg and the UFT reached an agreement on parking permits and spaces on Aug. 26 that preserves the same number of on-street and off-street parking spots for schools as last year.
Under the agreement, the DOE is the only agency not to lose parking spots after the mayor announced last spring that New York City would cut parking for all city agencies by 20 percent. Going forward, the number of permits available to a school will be roughly aligned with the number of available spaces currently designated for parking by DOE personnel. Accordingly, the city is reducing the number of placards in circulation from 63,000 to 25,000.
The new system will allow the principal and the UFT chapter leader in each school to decide how to distribute permits, including the opportunity to pool them.
Enforcement of the new system will begin Oct. 1.
UFT President Randi Weingarten said she was pleased with the agreement, which averted a threatened court case by the union.
“Teacher parking has always been a problem in New York City,” Weingarten said. “There has never been enough. In the past, at our prodding, the Department of Education has sought to address this problem by increasing the number of permits without increasing the number of actual spots.”
Weingarten said that policy “created problems for neighborhoods and educators.” She said she had hoped that the city would “not change the process right now,” but “the agreement the UFT reached with the city continues the number of available spots and more closely aligns the number of placards with the number of spots. It brings the decision on who gets the spot to the school level where it belongs and presents an opportunity for an ultimate increase in the number of spots.”
The union had filed a grievance and took the parking issue to the state Public Employment Relations Board once it learned that Bloomberg intended to cut parking spaces for its members. The grievance is being held in abeyance while the new system is implemented.
The agreement also presents an opportunity to get additional spots for schools that need them, thanks to a new appeals process. Under the agreement, a principal or chapter leader can appeal to the city if either one “believes that a school deserves additional curb-space allocated for school parking or that the number of current on-street spaces were incorrectly counted or there is additional off-street space that is under-utilized.”
Another highlight of the deal includes the issuance of at least 1,000 additional placards for teachers and staff who need to travel to multiple sites during the day. This group includes — but is not limited to — adult and continuing education, citywide speech services, educational vision services, hearing education services, home instruction, hospital instruction and non-public schools. A majority of those placards will allow the person to park citywide for three hours at a time, including at parking meters.
The principal and chapter leader in each school will decide the distribution of the on-street and off-street placards, whether through assignment to individual staff; pooling the placards for use each day (which could be on a first-come, first-served basis); or some combination of these two methods. If a principal and the chapter leader cannot agree, then the UFT president and the Commissioner of Labor Relations, or their respective designees, will make a final decision.
In an e-mail to chapter leaders, Weingarten said, “we recommend that chapter leaders advocate for a transparent and reasonable system of allocation that is fair to staff.”
