I read with interest Samuel Glasser’s article — “Residents upset with parking changes” — in last week’s Great Neck News.
The article stated that Village of Great Neck Plaza code enforcement has been ticketing residents of 50 South Middle Neck Road for overtime parking when they park directly across the street from their building; at that location, the east side of Middle Neck Road belongs to Thomaston; directly across the street, the west side of Middle Neck Road belongs to the Village of Great Neck Plaza, where there is a three-hour parking limit for non-residents.
The building garage at 50 South Middle Neck Road can only accommodate about half of its residents’ cars; 30 or 40 additional cars need to utilize the street across from their building in order to find parking.
Residents of the apartments on Welwyn Road have a parking problem similar in some ways to the residents of 50 South Middle Neck Road, as the buildings on the block either have no garages at all or small ones which do not accommodate most of the residents.
However, Welwyn Road residents are unable to find parking on their street because of the multitude of non-resident Shop Delight employees who illegally usurp the spaces on the block from early morning until 10 p.m. when the store closes.
Every day, I watch the code enforcement officer give tickets on Welwyn Road to those in violation of the three-hour non-resident parking limit—that is everyone except the illegally parked non-resident employees of Shop Delight.
I watch code enforcement chalk tires on the block and I watch them bypass the Shop Delight employee cars almost all of the time.
The employees come out frequently to check their tires for chalk marks, and when, on rare occasions they do get chalked, they wipe off the chalk marks and code enforcement bypasses their cars if and when they return to the street.
All of the code enforcement officers have cameras on their devices which could easily document illegally parked cars.
I have actually seen a code enforcement officer on Barstow Road taking photos of cars in violation, but on Welwyn Road, the cameras are never used.
Multitudes of letters have been sent to Great Neck Plaza mayor Jean Celender regarding this parking nightmare, but VGNP residents are unhappily aware of the fact that she only responds to residents’ needs when there is a pro-Celender photo op involved.
I find the action of VGNP code enforcement against the residents of 50 South Middle Neck Road to be mean-spirited.
However, it doesn’t surprise me, because why would a mayor who has continued to close her eyes to important needs of her own constituents care about those outside her village?
I hope that Thomaston Mayor Steven Weinberg will do the right thing and work to help the residents of 50 South Middle Neck Road resolve their parking problems as quickly as possible.
As for the residents of Welwyn Road, our needs continue to fall on deaf ears.
One can only wonder what drives Jean Celender’s actions about code enforcement’s selective ticketing practices on our street.
Muriel Pfeifer
Village of Neck Plaza
(We want our “Great” back!)
