Nicholas Day of Edge Auto Rental seeks liability transfer under 562
Day says Edge has received more than 175 idling summonses this year and absorbed about $60,000 in penalties for customer conduct. He supports Intro 562, supports procedural protections in 561-A, and opposes 11-A until the system is fixed.
Thank you, and thanks for giving us the time to be here today.
My name is Nicholas Day.
I'm the co-CEO of Edge Auto Rental.
We're an independent, employee-owned vehicle rental company.
We employ approximately 60 people here in New York, and we've been in business here for 40 years.
Yeah, I don't know what we do now.
It's just...
So those things don't plug into anything, the mics?
Testing, testing.
Yeah, okay.
This year alone, Edge has received more than 175 idling summonses totaling over $80,000.
We've recovered about $20,000 from our customers, leaving our company to absorb approximately $60,000 of penalties.
The problem is we didn't idle the vehicles.
Our customers did.
We weren't driving them.
They're not our employees.
We're not operating the vehicles.
We had no ability to prevent these violations.
We're the ones being penalized.
Making matters worse, as we've heard earlier today, summonses routinely arrive six months to more than a year after the alleged violation, long after the rental has ended and our customer has disappeared.
Many of our trucks must run their engines, as we've heard earlier today, to operate equipment, including lift gates and refrigerating systems.
That's not unnecessary idling.
That's doing the work the vehicles were designed to perform.
We're asking the council to take three important steps.
First, pass Introduction 562, allowing liability to transfer from rental companies to the actual renters.
Second, adopt the procedural protections in 561A, including timely notices and recognition of legitimate engine-required operations.
And third, do not increase the penalties under 11A until these fundamental problems are corrected.
Edge hasn't.
invested millions of dollars in clean vehicles.
We want to be part of the solution, but environmental enforcement should punish the party responsible for the violation, not the business that happens to own the vehicle.
We respectfully ask the council to fix the system.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You painted a portrait of a system that is not
working the way it should and so that's why we're here today and we value your your your you know on the ground understanding of what this all means to businesses you bet
Glenn every
Bus Association of New York State?