City enforcement agents set a ticket-blitz record this year by handing out 57,166 tickets in April, the most of any month in three years — despite Mayor de Blasio’s pledge to cut back on the summons avalanche.
Overall, residents and businesses were slammed with 237,641 tickets in the first five months of the year by seven agencies that operate under the umbrella of the Environmental Control Board, led by the Sanitation Department.
In the previous five months of 2013, agents gave out just 197,278 tickets, or 40,363 fewer.
When he was running for City Hall, de Blasio attacked the Bloomberg administration for plastering the town with unnecessary summonses and promised to institute reforms.
“The thing that we’re focused on immediately is ending the arbitrary ticket blitzes that were revenue-based,” the mayor said in February, two months after taking office.
He even cut projected fines revenue from $859 million to $789 million.
But records show that the ECB, which handles most fines except for motor-vehicle violations, is still doing a brisk business.
“I’ve heard stories recently from restaurateurs that some inspectors have been even more aggressive than they were before the reforms,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance.
In March, the City Council with the mayor’s support made changes in regulations that officials estimated would reduce fine revenues by 25 percent.
But the number of restaurant summonses given out in May was 2,239, down only slightly from 2,336 in May 2013.
The Sanitation Department, which accounts for more than 60 percent of all ECB summonses, wrote 40,517 tickets in April, also a three-year record.
Officials told The Post that this year’s seemingly never-ending winter could account for the year-to-year difference.
“Snow and icy-sidewalk violations for this past winter were up dramatically over the previous winter largely because of the extraordinary snowfall amounts — 19 snow events totaling nearly 60 inches, as compared to only 24 inches the previous winter,” said spokesman Vito Turso, an agency spokesman.
He also said sanitation enforcement agents were not writing up summonses in many areas of Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island early last year because of ongoing cleanup after Hurricane Sandy.
But this year’s sanitation summonses in April and May 2014 were still higher than 2011 and 2012 figures.
The FDNY also had a big month this March, the second-highest month on recent record blazing ahead with 5,411 violations.
FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer attributed the increase to “Operation High-Rise Safety,” which resulted in more than 7,700 high-rise inspections following a fatality in a Midtown fire in January.
“This aggressive fire safety and education initiative would explain the increase in fines and violations,” said Dwyer.
A mayoral spokesman said de Blasio intends to honor his pledge to get rid of summonses that should never have been given out in the first place.
“The de Blasio administration remains committed to reducing frivolous fines,” said spokesman Phil Walzak.
The ECB collected more than $67 million between January and June, compared to about $66 million in the same time period last year, officials said.