Officials: Sloppy Math, Assumptions Add Up to Inaccurate Reports of Parking Meter Theft

Exasperated over a media report that used creative math to estimate money stolen from Port Chester's parking meters, trustees asked the public to reserve judgment until police and auditors complete a pair of investigations.

Although they didn't mention it specifically, trustees were referring to a CBS News report that claimed "possibly $1 million or more" was stolen from the meters.

After an anchor teased the report by wondering if the thefts "totaled in the thousands, or possibly even in the millions," a CBS reporter declared the investigation "is the talk of Port Chester, NY" before approaching two random DPW workers standing behind a truck.

"Just wondering what's the mood at the DPW with this parking meter thing going on," the reporter said.

The men said they couldn't comment. The report arrived at the "$1 million or more" figure by extrapolating a two-week sample of police-supervised collections earlier this month. None of the details in the piece were attributed, except for a handful of quotes from Port Chester residents.

Authorities say they don't know how long employees have been stealing from the meters; they don't know how much money was collected at a nebulous point before the skimming started; and while they do have figures for two weeks of police-supervised collection, they don't know how much of the difference can be attributed to theft, seasonal factors, and the fact that more than 100 parking meters were broken for an indefinite period of time.

Over two weeks earlier this month, police-supervised meter collections brought in almost $18,000, compared to $10,200 from the same two-week period last year. Trustees cautioned against using such a small data sample size to extrapolate a larger figure and draw conclusions about how much money was stolen.

"There's still a lot of forensic work that has to be done, especially from the financial side," Trustee John Branca said. "Do we feel there's a substantial amount missing? Well, to tell you the truth, we don't know. If it's a dollar, it's important to us."

If every parking meter in town was filled with quarters every hour of the day for the 307 days drivers are required to feed the meters (excluding Sundays and holidays), the suspected thieves would have to steal every quarter from every meter for the better part of a year before they'd approach the $1 million mark, Trustee Sam Terenzi said.

At 2.8 million possible meter hours, and at 50 centers per hour, that means the maximum total revenue in one year would equal about $1.4 million if cars were parked in every metered space at every hour of the day. Port Chester collects almost $500,000 a year from meters.

After querying Village Manager Christopher Russo at last week's meeting, Terenzi and several others said they may never know how much money went missing. Board members haven't discussed hard figures in public; trustees have reserved those discussions for executive sessions, which are closed to the public and the media.

As for the assertion that the meter thefts are "the talk of Port Chester, NY," that didn't bear out at Monday's pubic comment session. Despite lively debates at two earlier meetings, and several notices that tonight's meeting would be a chance for the public to weigh in on the matter, only two people addressed the board -- meeting regular Goldie Solomon, and Richard Abel, publisher of the weekly Westmore News.