Volunteer Firefighter's Parking Ticket Causes Ire

Rich Foran, president of Scarsdale Volunteer Firefighters Company #1, saw more than a parking ticket on his windshield on July 27, he saw an injustice.

A volunteer firefighter in Scarsdale for more than 20 years, Foran parked that morning in a lot near the fire headquarters that was specified for village employees only.

"I had some correspondence with the village and they said (parking) has to be for village business," he said. "I said, 'Well, firefighting is village business.'"

Rita Azrelyant, who works in the village manager's office, said that when Foran protested his ticket, she checked with fire Chief Thomas M. Cain. They determined that Foran's unit, Volunteer Company #1, did not have any meetings that morning in the Popham Road station nor were they called to assist the fire department that day. Having determined that Foran did not park in the lot for official business, she upheld the ticket.

Foran said he had gone to fetch paperwork pertaining to both his volunteer position with the fire department, as well as for a defensive driving course he teaches for the village.

Azrelyant told Foran that he, like any resident or merchant in Scarsdale, could buy a $330 annual or $170 semi-annual parking pass. Foran balked at that suggestion.

"I was told I could buy a pass, I was like, 'Wait a minute, I'm volunteering, I've done so for 20 years,'" Foran said. "It seems kind of absurd."

Foran said that the village offered to drop the penalty of his ticket from $30 down to $5 but he refused the offer on principle. He's scheduled to appear in traffic court on Sept. 29 and said that a neighbor who is an attorney agreed to defend him.

Foran said he believes the issue goes beyond the simple parking ticket and is emblematic of what he perceives as tensions between the village's nearly 50 paid firefighters and the more than 80 volunteer firefighters.

Both the mayor and the fire chief were quick to refute that idea.

"Our volunteer firefighters are extraordinarily important to the village," Cain said. "They are just as important to our operations as our career staff, they just serve a different role."

In a letter to Foran dated two weeks before he was ticketed, Mayor Carolyn Stevens called the volunteer firefighters "highly valued" and praised them for doing everything from saving the town money to saving homeowners on insurance to fostering community spirit. Foran had written the mayor to complain about several issues.

Those issues included Foran's assertion that the volunteers did not get new ID cards or fire department radios and that they are forced to walk a long route to work because the village has not repaired a damaged, metal staircase at the Popham Road station that many volunteer firefighters use.

The mayor said that the new ID cards are coming soon. She also said that volunteers would be able to use either old fire department radios in their personal vehicles or use the new radios installed in fire department vehicles. She said the cost of putting new radios in volunteer firefighters' personal vehicles would be too high.

Cain said that he is looking for bids to fix the staircase at the Popham station, but added that the station is scheduled for a major refurbishment in 2011 and fixing the stairs might need to wait until those renovations are done. Plans are set to rip out the concrete floor that the fire trucks park on in order to dig the floor deeper so that there is more room in the firehouse, Cain said.

Neither Cain nor Foran said they knew of any other volunteer firefighters, or other volunteers including those that serve on village boards, who received tickets for parking in village employee lots. Cain said he sees this as a specific incident rather than a policy.

"If he was ticketed and was there at the behest of the village or the fire department, special consideration would be given," Cain said.