Accident Outside Bay Ridge Dealership – Tell the Whole Story
There was an accident outside of a dealership this week.
Gertz Kuntzman published an article with Councilman Brannan mouthing off and blaming dealerships. (See here)
There’s more to this story.
Gertz wrote what Brannan said: “Many of these dealerships have treated our sidewalks as an extension of their showroom for decades. The bad actors have all been warned many, many times. The NYPD is well aware and has spoken to these bad actors dozens of times.”
For years people have complained on social media to Councilman Brannan about the dealerships.
The Councilman proceeded to write silly tweets at one of the dealerships, instead of having the dealership ticketed!
Gertz Kuntzman wrote that in 2018, Brannan introduced legislation that was supposed to revoke the license of any car dealership which received two or more violations in a year for illegally parking or leaving cars on sidewalks. This article says Brannan reintroduced Van Bramer’s legislation from 2016 – see here. (Gertz didn’t mention this) See the bill here.
While the bill sounds good, it didn’t pass in either 2016 or 2018 with Brannan. Why wasn’t it updated so it could get passed in 2019 or 2020?
Why didn’t Gertz find out why this situation wasn’t rectified another way after 2018?
There was this strange pose in the newspaper.
Why would Brannan pose and take a silly stance in the paper when this is a serious issue?
Ticket them and pass the bill!
In 2019, Brannan told people that ticket agents looked away when cars didn’t have plates or registration:
Why didn’t Brannan request new ticket agents or DO Something about the agents not ticketing? (Someone tweeted this to Brannan)
Then Councilman Brannan’s responses to people became stranger and he told people that the cars without plates or registration can’t get ticketed:
The premise that a car without a plate can’t be ticketed is false! NYC publishes the violations here – it’s against Violation 74 to have a car without plates. The ticket is $65.
If a car doesn’t have a registration sticker, it receives a $65 ticket (Violation 70)- seen here.
If a person didn’t have an inspection sticker, they would receive a ticket for $65 (Violation #71) – seen here.
One Brooklynite joked about Brannan’s reason for the cars not being ticketed:
What stopped Brannan from making a law that clearly said a ticket agent could ticket every car without a license or registration outside a dealership? NYC could have raised more revenue from this bill.
On social media, people even wrote about their experience of almost getting hit because drivers couldn’t see her because of the double-parked cars. (Thank you to this person for speaking up and trying.)
Last year, right before Covid, it looked like Councilman Brannan was going to take action, but then Brannan went silent.
Shortly after, someone shared all these donations to Justin Brannan from Bram Auto Group all on one day in February 2020 (Seen here):
People didn’t talk about the dealerships for a long time after that.
The accident this week didn’t happen at a dealership where Brannan received the donations. But we are surprised Brannan would think it was okay to accept donations from any dealership, as he needs to represent residents who are calling for safety.
In March 2021, this person wrote about his experience – see here.
Gothamist writer, Jake Offenhartz echoed Streetsblog in his story, but didn’t answer the question: Why are dealerships in this area not ticketed each time they are on the sidewalk or not following the rules? Why didn’t Councilman Brannan taken action after 2018?
I didn’t know the woman who died, but how tragic this must be for her family.
This community needs to see an immediate change on 4th Avenue and not articles about a 2018 bill that went nowhere. If you are a journalist writing about a community you don’t live in, please interview someone who lives there and get the history and full story.
Hugs,
marlene
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 18th, 2021 at 1:18 pm
You can 100% issue tickets to vehicles without plates. the agent or officer simply needs to put the VIN number in the top right corner of the ticket. Justin is such a liar.
April 18th, 2021 at 1:45 pm
I don’t know why Justin Brannan would tell people that is the reason cars can’t be ticketed.
Maybe there is a loophole we don’t know about.
But even if there was a loophole, Brannan had the ability to make a crystal clear bill that explicitly said cars without plates on the street or sidewalk outside dealerships will be ticketed by ticket agents.