Randi Weingarten

Today is the first workday of the new year for city public school teachers, some 52,000 of whom have a little over a month to prepare for a commute without free parking privileges.

It took a little longer than expected, but the City is significantly shrinking the pool of parking placards available to public employees. The total number of placards allocated to certain departments -- most notably NYPD -- has been reduced from roughly 80,000 to about 55,000, as reported by the Times, News, and Post this morning. The police will have 21,474 fewer placards to distribute, a 33 percent reduction.

Back in January United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten protested Mayor Bloomberg's mandate to reduce the number government parking placard handouts. In a letter to the mayor, Weingarten called the move "deeply troubling," and claimed that taking free parking away from teachers -- who, unlike tens of thousands of other government employees, "are not abusers of parking permits" -- would keep "the best and the brightest" from accepting jobs in city classrooms. (What this says about transit-using teachers, who must pay for TransitChek cards even as the best and brightest drive and park for free, is anyone's guess.)

Streetsblog reader Richard Conroy sends along these photos and writes:

A car with a teacher's permit on the dashboard is parked beneath a "No Parking Anytime" sign. The license plate number does not match the one printed on the permit. (UncivilServants.org)