Rye's downtown parking lots are crumbling and neglected, according to a resident who says the city has no excuse for the mess.

Frank Kenny laid out the complaints in a letter published Tuesday, Sept. 8, in the Rye Record, calling the three parking lots in the central business district "disgraceful" and faulting the City Council, City Manager Brian Shea and the Department of Public Works (DPW) for failing to keep them up.

The central business district stretches along roughly 1,500 feet of Purchase Street between Rye City Hall and the Metro-North rail station. Kenny described each lot in detail.

One on the southwest side of Purchase Street was resurfaced less than two years ago with new lighting and landscaping but has since been "completely neglected," he wrote.

The lot on the northwest side has "crumbling blacktop, broken curbs, and traffic islands covered in weeds." A third lot on the west side has not been resurfaced in over 25 years, according to Kenny.

The train station lots drew his sharpest criticism. The city leases those lots from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and is responsible for their upkeep under the lease agreement, Kenny wrote. He called their condition "third world."

"If the DPW is incapable of doing what it is supposed to do, then let's find a landscape contractor who has the skills, manpower, and equipment to undertake this relatively simple but important work," Kenny wrote.

No response from Mayor Josh Nathan, Shea or the DPW appeared in public records as of publication. The specific terms of the city's MTA lease could not be independently confirmed.

The complaints land as the city is already rethinking its central business district. On April 15, the City Council authorized a request for proposals for a CBD Design Guidelines and Zoning Standards Study, budgeted at up to $60,000 over six months, according to city council records.

That study's scope includes parking requirements and potential reductions or shared parking provisions, according to a separate city document.

On June 10, the council voted 5-2 to adopt a six-month moratorium on new development applications in the CBD and adjoining business districts. Councilmembers Anderson and Jensen voted no.

Meanwhile, the city's own farmers market operating plan for Car Park #2, located off Theodore Fremd Avenue behind the Purchase Street stores, states that the city "will retain all responsibility for maintaining generally safe conditions of the market site such as patching broken pavement that could cause shoppers to fall." That market runs Sundays through Nov. 22.

If the CBD study holds to its six-month timeline from the April authorization, results could arrive as early as October.