The Village of Great Neck Plaza is considering a series of across-the-board hikes to its parking violation fines, as the board of trustees attempts to deter illegal parking that trustees say is making spaces scarce for shoppers in the village’s Middle Neck Road commercial district and compromising safety.
“It just didn’t make sense that we had some of the [low] fines in safety zones that are really a matter of safety,” said Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender. “We really have to deter that behavior.”
The proposed increases in fines vary based on offense, with many doubling and some increasing by more than 100 percent. Parking at an expired street meter would increase from $10 to $20 under the plan, and the fine for incurring an overtime street violation by feeding the meter would jump from $15 to $40. The heftiest fine would remain illegally parking in a handicapped space, which would increase from $200 to $250, and parking near a fire hydrant would jump from $75 to $125.
Dozens of other violations would also see their fines increase, and the new fine schedule would take effect in Aug. 1 if passed at an upcoming public hearing.
Aside from safety concerns, Celender said the village was dealing with a shortage of spaces during prime hours because of commuters, shop owners and their employees using public spaces or parking illegally instead of using long-term parking in the village’s parking garage. The current fines, Celender said, are not steep enough to discourage such use of the spaces.
“They do the math. We need to make that math more prohibitive,” Celender said.
Businesses that come before the board for conditional-use permits are often required to have their employees park in the garage, but existing businesses and those whose operations do not require permitting from the village do not have such stipulations, said Celender.
Preventing businesses from using spaces in public lots is difficult as the village has no easy way to tell if employees are parking for work or for personal reasons, she added.
Some employees as village businesses have made a habit of feeding meters beyond the time allowed for parking, and the increase in overtime parking fines is designed to deter that behavior, Celender said.
The law also included a series of changes to parking restrictions across the village, which Celender said had been already been put in place and were now being formally written into village code.
“It’s now time to memorialize all of those in our vehicle and traffic law,” Celender said.
