Paul Bass Photo
An outraged Westville writer succeeded in getting the parks department to follow parking laws in the wake of last week’s snowstorms — for a little while.
Call it the case of Oppenheimer v. Parks, a tale for our snowbound times.
“Oppenheimer” is Westville writer Mark Oppenheimer . After the latest snowstorms, Oppenheimer got hit with a ticket for violating a new state law ordering people to get all that snow off their vehicles before driving them.
Grumbling about the ticket, he kept noticing that around the corner from his house, a staffer at the parks and rec office avenues was keeping a department vehicle parked right in the bike lane on Yale Avenue near the corner of Edgewood. (Plowed snow was covering the shoulder where cars usually are parked.)
The car was there Friday. Saturday. Sunday. No ticket.
Oppenheimer took to YouTube to post a video editorial condemning the hypocrisy. Click on the video to watch.
The Independent followed up with acting parks chief Rebecca Bombero, who also lives around the corner from that parks office. She referred the inquiry to mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer.
Grotheer Monday morning said the car’s illegal parking caught city officials by surprise. They weren’t pleased.
“It’s a pool car. It’ll be harder to fix responsibility,” Grotheer said. “The good side of that is it will be moved promptly. The city’s inquiry into this is already underway.”
At 9:40, the Independent saw parks department recreation supervisor Felicia Shashinka (pictured) enter a second illegally parked department vehicle. She said the department had just “gotten a call” to move its vehicles out of the bike lane. She said another staffer would be out momentarily to move the other car, the one Oppenheimer had spotted.
Shashinka said until recently staffers were parking vehicles in the office’s lot behind the building, off the street. But “we we were having a lot of vandalism. So we were not parking there.” For now, she said, “we’re going to move them back there during the day” and find somewhere else to park after hours.
Oppenheimer passed by the office on his way downtown around 12:30 p.m. Monday. That original vehicle was gone. Three new parked parks and recs vehicles were now blocking the bike lane on Yale. He posted a new video; click on it to watch.