NYC won’t allow new street fairs due to NYPD overtime costs

New York City plans to reject applications for new street festivals in an effort to reduce NYPD overtime.

The move, which came at the request of the police department, was revealed in a statement. public announcement It was released earlier this week by the city’s Street Activity Permitting Office.

A moratorium on permits for new street festivals was in effect last year. The number of street fairs was also limited during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration due to the cost of overtime for the NYPD.

The latest move will block new applicants applying for permission to close more than one street for a festival. Supporters of the fairs said they are an important source of revenue for local civic groups and business improvement districts.

“The (Adams) administration claims to support business and commerce, and for a lot of small businesses, that’s a boon for them,” Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy and organizing for the nonprofit group Open Plans, told Gothamist. “Especially in terms of small business improvement districts and how much money they make annually to support their budgets.”

According to a public notice, the city’s street activities office “permits more than 200 street fairs and more than 5,000 other events” each year.

Street fairs are important neighborhood activities, Chabot said. “Having a moratorium on this shows that this is not a priority for the city,” he said.

New York Post Reported in 2017 Concerns about the number of street fairs in the city trace their origins to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where complaints about the number of multi-day street festivals and block closures have escalated.

NYPD overtime costs surpassed $1 billion for the first time last fiscal year, according to annual data. Mayor Management ReportA report card for city government. That was more than $200 million more than the city budgeted for police overtime.

According to the report, Mayor Eric Adams has budgeted $564 million for NYPD overtime in the current fiscal year, about half of what the department spent on overtime last year.

“To more effectively allocate police resources and control overtime costs, the NYPD has recommended that the (Street Activity Permitting Office) use its discretion to deny permit applications for new events in calendar year 2025,” the latest public notice read.

City Hall, which oversees the permitting office, declined to comment for this story. A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Nov. 20.