Village Ends Parking Sensor Experiment

The Village of Massapequa Park has voted to end the parking sensor program on Park Boulevard.

The Village board voted unanimously this week to end the three month agreement with Street Smart Automated Parking Solutions to monitor illegal parking patterns on the busy shopping hub.

"Although it's a very good service, we don't have a large enough parking area, nor do we have the desire to play big brother," Mayor James Altadonna said.

Street Smart had installed hockey puck sized sensors on Park Blvd. in areas where it was parking is prohibited. It did give the village good information about illegal parking according to Altadonna.

"We realized a few things," he said.  "Now we know where all the infractions are, but in analyzing the datait turned out that the length of time when the infractions took place was very small."

The cars were only parked illegally about three to four minutes, and in many cases about 30 seconds. The village did not give out tickets during the experiment, and wants to be cautious going forward.

"What we were afraid of, is that we didn't want to become confrontational," Altadonna said. "We are a business friendly community, we want to have people shop here and yet, we want them to abide by the law."

Now that they have information on where the illegal parking occured, they're going to give that information to traffic enforcement officers. 

"We've always said that this was not about the revenue stream, this was about safety," Altadonna said.