Hon. Joseph Bruno

Majority Leader

NYS Senate

Room 330

State Capitol

Albany, New York 12247

Dear Senator Bruno:

I am writing to ask your consideration in favor of legislation currently pending in your house on behalf of the City of Albany to enable the City to enact a resident parking permit system. I have an interest in this issue because it relates to a basic issue of fairness, as well as the quality of life and the future of the Capital Region.

The availability of free on street parking in Albany just encourages people in the Capital District to continue to move to suburban and rural areas, exacerbating existing problems with traffic congestion in the region, and making it more difficult to provide a viable public transit system. Albany is the only state capital in the northeast without a permit parking system, and the current proposed legislation is a sensible response to a critical local issue- enabling residents to have access to their homes, making it possible for them to find repair or rehabilitation contractors at reasonable prices, and even helping small businesses by ensuring that parking spaces turn over regularly, allowing more shoppers to patronize downtown businesses.

The current parking crisis makes it difficult to do just about anything that the residents of suburban neighborhoods take for granted, such as calling a plumber or roofer to make repairs on their houses. The parking crisis makes it difficult for workmen to find a place for their vehicles, and that difficulty is translated into higher costs for their services- much higher costs. Those higher costs discourage private investment in maintaining or rehabilitating the existing housing stock downtown.

With the new parking garage that the State built at Eagle and Madison, a good faith effort has been made to counter CSEA and PEF union concerns about parking. That garage contains more parking spaces than are located on the street in all the downtown neighborhoods combined. It is time to permit the controls to be put in place so that the downtown neighborhoods can continue to revitalize. The continued revitalization of downtown Albany's residential neighborhoods is an important issue for our entire region, and the parking permit is a revitalization tool that requires no massive capital investment. Please use your considerable influence to see that this happens.

Sincerely,