Speaker Quinn Gives Hope to Street Vendors
Coming shortly after the announcement that Bloomberg wants to launch a team of lawyers to hunt down food vendors with unpaid fines, we finally get some hopeful news on the food cart front. Last night City Council Speaker (and mayoral hopeful) Christine Quinn announced that on Wednesday she will be calling for a vote on the bills that the Street Vendor Project have been proposing for almost a year now. I guess she read the signs. The bills would lower the vendor fines from an unmanageable $1000 to a fee that vendors will actually be able to pay.
This is great news for street food vendors (and those of us who like to eat what they’re selling). But Gothamist reported that Mayor Mike (twirling his evil moustache) has proclaimed that lowering the fines is “one of the stupidest things I’ve heard.” He is threatening to veto the bill. Sean Basinski, from the SVP, believes the bills will have the full support of City Council and that they can hopefully over-ride the potential veto.
Posted by brianhoffman at 1:00 pm, February 22nd, 2013 under Street Vendor Issues.
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3 Comments
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I kind of agree. Isn’t the point of high fines to discourage the bad behavior (whatever it might be)?
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It’s what the fines are being levied for. Things like being an inch too far from the curb or from whatever places they need to be a certain distance from — things that aren’t really a thousand-dollar problem and things that can be remedied without the need for such punitive measures. Things that until very recently were the much more reasonable $250 fines.
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I am not in favor of lowering the fine because it will encourage wrongdoing on the behalf of certain percentage of street vendor.