The City Council voted unanimously yesterday to do away with those despised shame stickers that city Sanitation enforcers slap on cars violating alternate-side street cleaning rules. The stickers were first introduced in the '80s and were inspired by a disgruntled property owner who got fed up with a car blocking his driveway and covered it with stickers. According to the Times, the Sanitation Commissioner noticed it, and soon the department's "scarlet letter stickers" were born. Sanitation insists they help keep the streets clear for the cleaning machines, but the City Council outlawed them anyway.
“Ticketing is supposed to help us enforce the law — not unfairly punish people with no chance for swift recourse,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn said yesterday, recalling that when her car got the dreaded sticker in college, it took her days to remove it. "It was a multiday effort. You almost have to chisel it." The bill was sponsored by Councilman David Greenfield, who has been deluged with sticker-shock complaints from constituents. "What makes this such a terrible infraction that you have to be punished in such a serious way?” Greenfield said yesterday. "It’s not reasonable behavior in the 21st century."
Sanitation workers slap 400 shame stickers on cars each day of alternate-side parking. At a hearing in November, Sanitation official John Nucatola insisted that the city’s streets were cleaner because of the stickers, and offered to alter them to make them easier to remove. Mayor Bloomberg is also pro-shame sticker; in November he famously remarked, "Don’t break the law. It’s almost like, you know, you murder your parents and then you say to the judge, ‘But I’m an orphan, you can’t put me in jail.’ Don’t murder your parents, you don’t have, you’re not an orphan, and in this case, don’t break the law you don’t have to worry about it."
While it's unclear if Bloomberg will veto the sticker-ban bill, Quinn says she has the two-thirds votes necessary to override any veto. The Council also passed a bill yesterday to give drivers a five-minute grace period at muni-meters; Bloomberg has said he will veto that one. And the City Council better not even think about legalizing parental homicide.
