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Q&A
Council member discusses amendments and seeks input on enforcement measures
2:26:38
·
6 min
Council Member Pierina Sanchez discusses proposed amendments to street vending legislation, focusing on increasing enforcement capacity and creating clear standards for license suspension. She seeks specific input from stakeholders on additional enforcement measures beyond increasing the number of licenses.
- Sanchez mentions increasing the number of sanitation officers as licenses increase
- She asks for specific suggestions on enforcement beyond the proposed 50-foot buffer
- Stakeholders provide various suggestions, including mandatory education for vendors, increased funding for enforcement, and clearer guidelines for enforcement agencies
Pierina Sanchez
2:26:38
Thank you chair.
2:26:39
I just want to thank you all for continued engagement.
2:26:44
I don't know that all of you, but most of you attended the conversations we had in November, and I think we've come a long way.
2:26:52
I really tried, we really tried to make sure that the hearing was on the amended legislation, but it just didn't work out.
2:27:00
But I wanna ask questions about the amended legislation, the amendments that we are wanting to pursue, which are particularly first increasing the number of sanitation officers as the availability of licenses increases so that we're increasing the capacity to, as you said, I'm sorry, have a lot of papers in front of me, but as you said, make sure that we as a city have the ability to go after the time, place, and manner you know restrictions that are currently on the books, and even as we consider others.
2:27:33
And the second amendment would create clear standards for how a vendor's license can be suspended and revoked after persistent violations.
2:27:41
So these items go hand in hand.
2:27:44
Right?
2:27:44
It's it's all about balance.
2:27:46
This is not I'm not here to be dogmatic.
2:27:48
I'm not here to do anything except try to get us closer to something that makes sense, a rational system in the city of New York.
2:27:57
And so I I ask you, and you you highlighted a few changes already, but beyond licenses, and we can have many conversations about how to change the number of licenses, and I look forward to those.
2:28:09
On enforcement, is there anything else that you would specifically want to see the city do?
2:28:14
You mentioned 50 feet, a change to 50 feet.
2:28:17
Are there any other specifics you would want to see changed?
Barbara Blair
2:28:22
Well I think just having listened to the panel that you had, the city administration panel about education and reaching out to the vendors, You know, the licensing, to receive a license, maybe they're instead of relying on them maybe getting an SBS brochure that maybe they do or don't read, you know, maybe there's some course that you have to take.
2:28:44
Like you have to take a course to get a driver's license and then you have to pass the course and then you're issued a license.
2:28:51
So that's just one thing.
2:28:53
The other thing that we mentioned, my testimony was not two minutes, was the idea that as you add licenses, you add enforcement, and so that requires money in the budget to hire those people because we heard that there's not the capacity within these agencies because they're already over capacity in terms of what they have to do.
2:29:13
There's just not enough staffing.
2:29:15
And then finally, at least from our perspective in the Garment District in Midtown Manhattan, the streets are very narrow.
2:29:21
They're very crowded.
2:29:22
We have illegal vending all over the place.
2:29:26
NYPD, DSNY, we're in touch with them all the time.
2:29:30
They enforce to the degree that they're able to.
2:29:34
If you're a repeat offender, your goods should be confiscated and destroyed and you're never vending again ever.
2:29:44
And this idea that you can get multiple summonses and use them as wallpaper in your living room makes a mockery of the council and our justice system.
Erin Piscopink
2:29:55
I want to just thank you for the effort that you put into those roundtables in the fall.
2:30:00
I really appreciate to have a seat at the table like we discussed, but what's clearly a good faith effort on your part to continue in the dialogue, I appreciate it very, very much.
2:30:12
I think with respect to DSNY, I worry that there might be some kind of missing components around enforcement education.
2:30:24
As a brief example, we, after literal years of asking for enforcement from DSNY, were able to get enforcement in Soho about a week ago.
2:30:34
And consistently, 90% of the vendors we have in the district are out of compliance in one way or another with vending laws.
2:30:42
When DSNY came out, they issued only two summonses which were kind of outside of the scope of DSNY enforcement, more related to vending from metered parking, because the vendors they were interacting with were licensed.
2:30:57
But that doesn't mean that Time Place Manor was correct.
2:30:59
It just means they were licensed.
2:31:01
And so I think there's a real gap in where we're seeing enforcement and where we need enforcement in the community as it is.
2:31:08
And I'll also say I can completely understand an agency needing increased resources, but it's interesting to me that in the first week where, you know, composting became mandatory, the agency was able to issue, I think, 2,000 summonses in that opening week.
2:31:25
So the agency clearly has the ability to do enforcement and issue summonses.
2:31:30
I think there's just a mismatch or some problems that we could solve together.
Evan Sweet
2:31:37
Excuse me.
2:31:39
Just to add on a little bit of that, I don't want to say too much about our agency partners who we work very closely with to make sure our streets are clean day in and day out.
2:31:49
But I will say that with DSNY enforcement issues, we found a disconnect, as Erin just mentioned, about their understanding of where vending law or vending enforcement can take place or what they're able to enforce.
2:32:01
I think having better education on the agency side and being clear and getting those guidelines would be very important and supportive of the overall ability to enforce.
2:32:12
The second thing I would say is that I work in the operations side of our organization as well as the public realm investment and improvement.
2:32:20
So when I work with agencies like the DOT to install new seating or new public space amenities, I have to go through landmarks.
2:32:27
I have to go through the DOT review in a number of different places.
2:32:30
And while I'm not here to suggest that we need to put a whole new administrative burden on vending, I think the ability for an entity to just set up on a street without any kind of guidance framework or structure or what is frankly in the city limited guidance framework infrastructure versus what I have to do is very difficult.
2:32:47
I know in some other cities the city even in fact designates parking spots as vending spaces and sells those to street vendors.
2:32:55
There's a number of other ways to help codify and structure the locations for vending and kind of help with some of these time, place and manner issues in that way.
2:33:03
And I also would agree with Barbara Blair here about having the opportunity or the ability for vending to take place in the curb lane versus on the sidewalk, especially in very congested districts like the Meat Packing District or the Garment District or on Broadway.