Staten Island/Southern Brooklyn State Sen. Diane Savino, today, announced she has sponsored legislation in the senate to ban party boats from Sheepshead Bay.
The measure follows a similar measure that Sheepshead Bay Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz sponsored on the assembly side in February.
“Sheepshead Bay where the boats dock is a small area and there are no problems with the fishing boats. People get on, have a good time and then leave,” said Savino. “But the party boats can’t seem to be good neighbors. We’ve tried to talk to the operators, to give them an opportunity to clean-up their act, but they haven’t done anything.
Savino repeated Cymbrowitz’s allegations that the party boat attendees utilize all the parking, get drunk and rowdy before they board the boats and once they come off them, littering and sometimes urinating on the sidewalk and street.
“We’re not saying they can’t do business. Just not here. They can go to Red Hook or the West Side of Manhattan. This is a residential neighborhood. It’s not the kind of environment that people want to be exposed to party boats,” said Savino.
Both Savino and Cymbrowitz disputed allegations from some in the party boat industry and the neighborhood that they wanted to ban the party boats because most of the patrons are black.
Cymbrowitz noted his wife is Puerto Rican, and Savino called the notion that she was racist, “absurd.”
Both said they would consider dropping or changing the legislation if the operators cleaned up their act, but at this point they have their doubts that this will happen.
“We’ve talked with them before, but them just telling us they will do something and then not doing it won’t work anymore,” said Savino, adding they should have had security and rules in place by now anyway.
Cymbrowitz said he is having a meeting with all the stakeholders involved at the end of the month, but unless there are concrete changes, he will be pushing the legislation.
