Free parking? This isn’t Monopoly.
The city has cancelled access to its parking garages for several people using no-fee parking passes, after discovering that 160 electronic transponders owned by the city were not registered with the Parking Authority.
The city has thousands of transponders, an in-car plastic device similar to an “E-ZPass” issued to private citizens who pay for monthly parking and city employees who don’t, but record-keeping for the units has been scant.
Parking and Transportation Director Ian Sacs said one of the administration’s “incremental” steps to transparency is to require stringent registration of the transponders that give free access to city parking garages.
“We’re cleaning things up.” – Ian Sacs
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Sacs began an inventory in October that consisted mostly of monthly-rate residents, but for everyone else, “There wasn’t much [record-keeping] at all.”
He found 500 vehicles that were programmed for free parking. He matched some of those transponders to 340 city vehicles – public works, police, fire, inspection, etc. – leaving 160 unregistered units.
160 turned off
Those 160 transponders were deactivated in January. To identify who was using them, Sacs provided garage attendants with forms that were filled out by any persons claiming their transponders weren’t working.
If they filled out the form they were allowed to park, but over the next several months the city either registered or eliminated parking permissions for 151 of those. Nine units still have not been accounted for, and remain deactivated.
Sacs would not give details about the units that were eliminated, but he did say that if the former administration had granted free parking to vendors or other individuals, then that was their policy.
The Zimmer administration, he said, did its own evaluation of who has free parking and has created a record.
“This is an excellent example of the behind-the-scenes efforts that the residents might not be aware of,” Sacs said. “Incrementally, we’re cleaning things up.”
He couldn’t estimate revenue that may have been lost from the unregistered transponders, but he said that residents are charged $30 per day to park in the garages.
Investigation into stolen e-pass
An off-duty policeman working security at a city parking garage arrested a man two months ago who could not explain why he had an unregistered transponder. A subsequent investigation led to the arrest of a municipal garage worker who allegedly admitted to taking the unit from a police car.
On Sunday, March 21, Detective Steven Kranz was in uniform working an off-duty city-contracted garage security shift in Garage B, Second and Hudson streets.
At 2:57 a.m., a man had trouble entering the garage using his parking transponder. Kranz saw the parking attendant helping the man, later identified as a 28-year-old Hasbrouck Heights resident, waving the transponder in various directions in front of the receiver.
While doing so, Krantz spotted the number “116” marked in black ink on the device, markings he knew to be used for city vehicles, according to his police report.
He asked the parking attendant to check the serial number in the computer database, and the unit came back as property of the city.
Kranz asked the man how he came into possession of the unit. The man told Kranz he got it from a friend in Englewood. Police arrested him for theft of property lost, mislaid, or delivered by mistake, and theft of services.
City worker charged with theft
The investigation spanned two months, but police ultimately traced the “mislaid” city transponder back to a municipal garage employee, Terry McDonald, 22, of Hoboken.
McDonald was arrested on a warrant while at work on Friday, May 21. He told police that while working in the city repair garage in January, he was asked to “strip” a police car, which he said contained the transponder in question.
McDonald allegedly told police that he took the transponder and a mobile phone SIM card.
He also allegedly confessed that after using both items a few times for personal use, he gave the transponder to a friend in Englewood and the SIM card to his uncle in Jersey City.
Police charged him with burglary, theft of moveable property, and theft of services.
The city has suspended McDonald without pay pending a hearing on his termination. –
Timothy J. Carroll may be reached at tcarroll@hudsonreporter.com.