The Village of Roslyn Board of Trustees passed a resolution on Tuesday confirming the mayor’s decision to suspend parking meters for the holidays.
Mayor John Durkin, who has faced complaints about a lack of downtown parking, decided to forego parking meter fees during the holiday shopping season.
The resolution was approved unanimously.
Parking meter rules will be suspended through Jan. 3, and have been since Dec. 12, village Clerk Anita Frangella said.
The village voted on the resolution Tuesday because it did not hold a board meeting in November.
On Nov. 17 as many as 50 merchants held a meeting with the mayor and a parking consultant to discuss the dearth of parking in the village, said John P. Gibbons, the village attorney, who was present.
At the meeting, merchants proposed a suspension of the meter fee for the holidays.
They said “it had been done in the past. Good for merchants; good for residents,” Gibbons recalled.
At a recent Roslyn Chamber of Commerce meeting at the Landmark Diner, the chamber president, Vito DiTrapani, “conveyed that we wanted the mayor to strongly consider waiving the use of the meters during the holiday period,” he said in an email. “So it may have helped making it happen and being an election year I am sure did not hurt the cause either!”
It could not be determined whether Gibbons and DiTrapani were referring to the same meeting.
A village official said the meters were not suspended for the holidays last year.
“Last year, we didn’t cover the meter costs, because we didn’t have the software for the new Muni-Meters,” Frangella said. “We went back to what we’ve done for years this year: covering the meters for the holiday season.”
According to Roslyn village code, “The Mayor shall be responsible for the installation, operation, maintenance, policing and supervision of parking meters in this village.”
Deputy Mayor Marshall Bernstein acknowledged that “ideally we probably would have taken it up at the November meeting,” but that the meter suspension “is a noncontroversial situation.”
Local consumers and business owners have increased their complaints about the inconvenience of the meters in recent months.
“Some villages do not charge for the meters in December to encourage holiday shopping; this is not done here but should be, in my opinion,” Barbara Kaplan, a board member at the Roslyn chamber, said in late November.
Durkin acknowledged in October that “there’s a problem with the downtown” parking, though it will not be fixed in the short term, he said.
