Planning a street fair? You might want to talk to City Hall first. A proposed rule on issuing street fair permits may throw cold water on your plans.
The city’s Street Activity Permit Office — part of the Office of Citywide Events Coordination and Management — before the end of 2012 proposed a moratorium on all new street fair permit applications during 2013 and will hold a public hearing on the idea on Jan. 22 at 11 a.m. at 22 Reade St., in Lower Manhattan, 2nd Floor in the Barrish Conference Room.
According to SAPO, over two hundred permitted street fairs and over 5,000 events occur within the city each year. Almost all of these events involve permits for the use of multiple blocks over several days, erections of structures, the food and clothing vendors and live music performances, those events take police manpower away from more serious jobs.
“Such events require additional police presence and increase overtime expenditure by the City,” SAPO said in a press release for the public hearing. “In order to effectively deploy police resources, the NYPD has requested for the calendar year 2013 that SAPO exercise its discretion temporarily to deny permits for additional events that place an excessive burden on police resources and divert uniformed personnel from core crime fighting, public safety and counterterrorism duties.”
The proposal would allow SAPO to deny permits for any street fairs that had not been previously held in 2012. The rule would only be in place for one calendar year.
Public comments on the proposal can be submitted electronically at nyc.gov/ nycrules or in writing to
Mr. Emil Lissauer
Director
Street Activity Permit Office
100 Gold St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10038.
Written comments are due by the close of business Jan. 22.
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