Felice Farber of STA supports 561-A with amendments and opposes 11-A
Farber represents union specialty trade contractors and says running engines often powers pumps, lifts, decontamination units, or emissions cycles. She supports 561-A with additional amendments but asks the Council to hold Intro 11-A until the process is fixed.
So the Subcontractors Trade Association is a member of the Building Trade Employers Association.
They're an association of 24 different trade associations, of which we're a member of them.
Oh, okay.
So that's the connection.
I got that.
Okay.
Thank you for being here, of course.
Nice to see you.
And please commence with your good testimony when the sergeant prompts you to do so.
Thank you.
So the subcontractor, I'm Felice Farber, Executive Director of the Subcontractors Trade Association.
We represent more than 350 union specialty trade contractors, including electrical, plumbing, sheet metal, demolition, concrete pumping, remediation, and many more.
Their crews and trucks are on job sites in every borough, every day.
We want cleaner air and less needless idling, too.
The citizens'air complaint...
program as it operates now is generating penalties without changing much on the street and is not addressing the problems in environmental justice communities.
On a construction job, a running engine is often doing work.
It may be powering a pump, a lift gate, or an environmental decontamination unit that keeps workers safe.
It may be running equipment for street and utility work in the roadway.
It may be finishing an emissions control cycle the law requires or keeping a driver safe in dangerous heat or cold while waiting to get onto a job site.
Our members are being ticketed in exactly these situations, even when the truck displays a valid exemption sticker.
Timing makes it worse.
Notices arrive many months after the fact, and hearings come a year later.
By then, no one can piece together what happened at a single stop, and evidence that would clear a contractor is too often not considered, and opportunities to take corrective action against that driver are not available.
Intro 561 takes steps to fix this.
We support it with additional amendments, which are outlined in our detailed written testimony provided, and in the specific recommendations that are put forth in the BTA's testimony that they'll be providing.
We further ask the committee to hold on Intro 11A, raising the fines and escalating them across an entire company rather than by vehicle or driver, punishes small and mid-sized businesses before the process itself is fixed.
We urge you to fix the system first.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms.
Farber.
We certainly appreciate working with you and getting the benefit of your perspective.
I'm going to have a question for you, too, I think, when we finish the panel.
Melissa Barber.