Letters

I always worry, when politicians are trying to sell us something, that they always pick and choose the information that they give us.

Take the new paid parking agenda in Sag Harbor. Aidan Corish wants you to believe at least two things that are just dead wrong.

First, the premise that 222 paid parking spots are going to generate $1 million for Sag Harbor in 180 days. This is just simply mathematically impossible.

The second premise is even more deceitful, this being that enforcement is taken out of the equation, leading to a more positive parking experience. This is the biggest crock of all.

Enforcement is the key to such an app-driven parking agenda. In fact, enforcement will be in real time, in that the data will give traffic enforcement an alert notifying them when a spot has expired so that they can immediately respond and ticket the miscreant who allowed their time to lapse. Instead of the old system, which was based, so to speak, on “Sag Harbor time.”

This is basically a system that spies on you. True, you set the spying in motion by giving them your data — make, model, plate number and state in which your car is registered — but once your time is up, off goes the data to enforcement to summons you.

In fact, based on this data, enforcement will basically logistically set themselves in perimeters to maximize this enforcement. Now, that sounds like a real small-town, fun-loving parking system!

So, you see, it’s twofold: one, you generate money via the parking app, but, two, you maximize enforcement by utilizing and quickly sending traffic enforcement to summons you.

Hence, the real money that this will generate: the friendly ticket that people will come back to, because they allowed their parking to expire that extra second. In fact, I will bet fines either equal or exceed parking-generated income.

So, it’s not the parking income driving this. It’s the summons delivered in real time, which is not the old Sag Harbor time.

We also know that this first step is just the beginning of paid parking in almost all of Sag Harbor. It may be 25 percent to start, but clearly Mr. Corish’s goal is to eliminate free parking in the future.

I say resist this by shopping in the Bridgehampton Commons and taking your local money where you’re wanted, and leave the friendly parking to the unsuspecting tourists.

Thomas M. Jones

Sag Harbor