Parking tickets cause a stir

Businesses on Long Beach Road in Island Park were taken by surprise earlier this month when the village suddenly began ticketing for parking.

There has long been a one-hour parking law on the books for Long Beach Road, but it has not been enforced for years. But the sudden re-enforcement caught people off guard, leaving employees and customers of Long Beach Road businesses holding tickets for parking too long.

“It’s annoying when your employee gets a ticket,” said Glenn Ingolia, president of the Island Park Chamber of Commerce. “It’s bad business when your customer gets one.”

The issue of the re-enforcement was raised at the Village Board of Trustees meeting on May 17 by business owner and Chamber member Mike Scully, who said he had been approached about the subject by many other business owners.

“Usually when [the village] starts re-enforcing, like with garbage collection, there’s some notice,” said Scully, a Chamber member and owner of Century 21 Scully Real Estate, which is located on Long Beach Road. “And probably this wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the village had just said, ‘Starting June 1, we’re going to start enforcing the parking codes.’ I think they just came out and blitzed it in a couple of days and took everyone by surprise.”

Island Park Mayor James Ruzicka explained that the village has new Code Enforcers, which is one of the reasons for the renewed enforcement. “What’s happening is that a lot of people who work full-time jobs for one of our businesses park their cars [on Long Beach Road] and then people can’t come in and do business,” Ruzicka said. “I’ve wanted to stop at the deli and couldn’t park, and said, ‘I’ll go somewhere else.’ So it is affecting our businesses.”

Ingolia agreed with Ruzicka for the need for enforcement. There are some businesses on Long Beach Road where customers usually wouldn’t be inside for more than an hour. For them, the enforcement on the time limit means that their customers will have a place to park and it will help their business. But for others, like a hair salon, the enforcement could hurt their business by ticketing their patrons.

At the meeting, Ingolia also presented the board with some suggestions from the Chamber of Commerce for changing the law, including adding parking meters (which Ruzicka said would be too expensive to do) and changing the time limit from one to two hours.

“We want to keep the village’s needs in mind,” Ingolia said. “We think it’s a good thing the village is enforcing the laws, we just think the laws need to be tweaked.”

Ruzicka said that he would be receptive to suggestions from the Chamber, which set up a tentative meeting to talk to the Board of Trustees.

“We’re not saying it can’t be changed to some degree,” said Ruzicka. “But at the same time, we’re not looking to make it full-day parking. We have a lot of people who use the railroad — they would park there and not get a ticket, and then our businesses suffer because [their customers] can’t park. So it’s a mixed bag.”