Readers Write: Take off blinders, Plaza parking a problem

The Island Now

In reference to Jacob Avi Cohen’s Jan. 19 letter about Shop Delight, he states, “There is no parking situation on Welwyn Road. There is just a good economy.”

 Mr. Cohen, how often do you visit Shop Delight and how much time do you spend physically on Welwyn Road to study the parking situation before and/or after you shop?

 Perhaps you should enlighten yourself by taking a walking tour of the area adjacent to Shop Delight, preferably on a Tuesday morning, arriving just before 10 a.m.

Tuesday is street cleaning day on the right side of Welwyn Road and there is no parking between 9 and 10 a.m., so the street should be empty when you arrive.

 You will be able to make note of the non-resident employees quickly filling the 3-hour parking spaces on Welwyn Road, even before the 10am parking restriction for street cleaning goes off.

 You will be able to count the number of employees that you see getting out of their cars, easily identifiable by the Shop Delight logos on their clothing; and you will also have the opportunity to document the presence of their cars on the street.

 I would like you to return shortly before 1pm when you might see the employees checking for chalk marks on their tires, and wiping them off if they find them; however, this doesn’t happen very often because Village code enforcement rarely monitors or tickets the cars.

Then you can watch the employees move their cars to other locations in the area —sometimes working in pairs to swap parking spaces — a violation of Village Parking Code, Chapters 151-2, 3 & 4, and also of Shop Delight’s conditional use permit, which states that its employees may not park on the neighboring streets.

 I would like you to return once again at 7 p.m. to count the employee cars which you have documented that are still parked on the streets adjacent to the store (many remain until the store closes at 10 p.m.).

 And I would like you to note on each of your visits how many residents of the area (identifiable by VGNP stickers on the left rear windows of their cars) you see driving around and around for a very long time before they are able to find a place to park anywhere near the buildings where they live.

I would like you to return to the area on any weekday when Shop Delight is closed for observance, and all the other businesses are open, so you can see that the parking problem on the street is non-existent when the market is closed and employees’ cars are not on the street.  

 And while you are in the area when the market is open, I would like you to go into Shop Delight without wearing blinders.

 You state in your letter that “the employees present for work are 10 people or less.”

If you count those working the cash registers, the floor, the deli, the bakery, the take-out and fish departments, along with those downstairs in the food prep kitchen and office (whom you have completely neglected to account for), you will see how erroneous your number is.

 You also state in your letter that the majority of Shop Delight employees take the bus to get to work. Have you interviewed them to obtain actual numbers?

 No one in this area wishes Shop Delight ill, but a “rules do not apply to us” attitude —unfortunately prevalent among some members of this community—precludes Shop Delight from being a valued neighbor and makes one wonder about their work ethic.

 It is also important to note that our illustrious full-time mayor, Jean Celender, is complicit in Shop Shop Delight’s behavior.

The Village has the right to suspend or revoke Shop Delight’s conditional use permit for their many flagrant violations, but Celender is not interested in those who don’t feed her agendas and chooses to close her eyes to the situation.

 A good business also needs to be a good neighbor; unfortunately, you see only that “There is just a good economy” with reference to Shop Delight.

When Fox News (so beloved by the guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) recently asked Eric Trump if his father was a racist, he responded that the only color his father saw was “green.”

 Sound familiar? Birds of a feather…

 

Muriel Pfeifer

Village of Neck Plaza

(We want our “Great” back!)

 

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