New Yorkers who don’t move their cars for street cleaning will once again face the penalty of bright green stickers stuck to their windows.
A new bill that passed the City Council last week allows the departments of Sanitation and Transportation to place big, green stickers on car windows when they are not moved on time — along with the standard $65 ticket.
"This vehicle violated street cleaning rules," the stickers read. "As a result, this street could not be properly cleaned."
It’s not the first time city agencies have employed the practice to further punish those who leave their cars to languish, preventing street sweepers from making their rounds. The stickers were a common sight from the late ‘80s until 2012, when the Council voted unanimously to ban them — overriding a veto from then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
At the time, residents complained that the stickers took days to remove and permanently damaged their cars.
The new measure was sponsored by Councilmembers Farah Louis, Chris Banks, Shahana Hanif, Carl Wilson and Gale Brewer, who enthusiastically slapped a sticker on the window of a car on the Upper West Side on Tuesday.
The stickers are broadly being described as "shame stickers" in news reports and social media, but in a statement, the DSNY said shaming people isn't the point — it's to get owners moving their cars.
At a hearing about the bill in May, Department of Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson said nearly 500,000 vehicles violate alternate side parking rules each week, preventing cleaning of more than 3,000 miles of streets.
“The price of non-compliance, combined with the low risk of getting caught, is a cheaper option for drivers than the opportunity cost of moving their car or paying for off-street parking,” he said. “To clean your neighborhoods and change the culture of filth on our streets, that must change.”
Anderson also advocated for statewide legislation that would allow street sweepers to have cameras, enabling them to directly report cars that violate parking rules and block their way.
Sanitation officials said workers placed the first stickers early Wednesday morning on cars that blocked street sweepers on West 90th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West.
“Street cleaning only works when cars move,” Brewer said in a statement, calling the stickers “one of the city’s most effective tools” for enforcing alternate side parking before the 2012 ban.
She called the new law "a practical, common-sense step that will help keep our streets cleaner for everyone,” she said.
It’s unclear whether the stickers will be easier to remove than their predecessors.
