Patricia N. Saffran, NY City Council Desperate to Destroy the Carriage Horse Industry

There is no logical basis for banning the horse drawn carriage industry in New York City. Notwithstanding, the NY City Council is holding a hearing based on “Romanch’s Law,” attempting to do exactly that. The event could wind up being a ‘show trial’ with a predetermined negative outcome. The two fairly recent deaths of Lady and Ryder were only natural deaths. The death of carriage horse Deniz from poisoning was due to toxic yew plants placed by the Central Park Conservancy at 90th St. These plants don’t belong in the park at all, and there was no warning sign such as – yew plants, poisonous to some animals.

As to the unfortunate accident involving tourist Romanch Mahajan, the Central Park Conservancy can probably be blamed for that as well. They recently changed their rules to allow reckless speeding e-bikers and motorized pedicabs in what had been the horses only lane. Now that is asking for trouble, which is exactly what happened. The horse Samson, involved in the accident, is intelligent and will not spook without a reason. The NYPD has not released an investigative report which they may or may not have done. A question, was the accident with the horse spooking caused by a zooming e-biker in the horse’s lane going 40 miles per hour?

Motorized vehicles don’t belong in the parks at all according to the original parks’ regulations. Further, when the Central Park Conservancy changed the rule, they knew that the new rule was unsafe as they never asked the NYC Department of Health equine veterinarians to approve it, which the veterinarians would never have done.

In addition, the City Council does not care at all about the 20 deaths on average per year from e-biker accidents. They have no plans to eliminate the dangerous e-bikers whereas the City is on the rampage after the first death ever from a carriage horse accident, likely caused by the rule change by the Central Park Conservancy.As to the horses’ staging areas at 6th and 7th Avenues, it’s the motorized pedicab drivers who have been scamming tourists in what should be the horses only staging areas, not the carriage drivers. The pedicab drivers have also been attacking and bullying the carriage drivers without any help from the NYPD to intervene.

There’s also the issue of the NY City Council ban effectively eliminating the carriage drivers’ livelihood. While they claim to offer the carriage drivers alternative employment, no jobs in the city are comparable to carriage driving. Driving a motorized vehicle on any kind, that had once been proposed, has no affinity whatsoever with equestrian skills. If successful with Romanch’s Law, the NY City Council would be putting 300 hundred blue collar workers out of business without any parachute, and it was thought that Mayor Mamdani, as a socialist who supports the ban, was for workers’ rights.

The ultimate goal of the ban by the City Council, joining with animal lobbying groups, has always been for their real estate backers to obtain the valuable stables, sitting on land they’ve been longing to develop.

Tourist Scott Mate of Rochester, NY, said recently, “Every time we come to New York we take a carriage ride. I love it. I’d be very upset if they ban the carriage horses. They’d be destroying part of New York’s history and culture.”

Kind regards,
Patty Saffran
Former US Editor
Politicalite.com UK
Former Contributing Editor
Horse Directory Magazine
402 East 65th St, 5E
New York, NY 10065
(212) 988-4159