Tamara Perez tells CBS 2 HD she still can’t believe it happened.

The incident happened Tuesday after Perez ran to her East Village home to pick up some papers. Once in the cab, the 35-year-old realized she had no cash the pay the $10 fare. Instead, she pulled out a credit card, but the cabbie wasn’t having it.

“He wouldn’t let me use the card, he wouldn’t press the button,” she tells CBS 2. “I said, ‘You have to press the button,’ and he’s like, ‘No, no I don’t know, I don’t know how to use it.'”

Perez says the driver got out of the cab and told her to go get cash. She refused, said she wanted to use the machine and would tip well.

The carts would be confined to specific areas — identified by police precincts — and would be monitored by health inspectors and the police. Violations could lead to the seizure of carts and fines.

If approved by the Council, the measure will call for phasing in 750 permits per year for two years, with 500 earmarked for the Bronx, 500 for Brooklyn, 250 for Queens, 200 for Manhattan and 50 for Staten Island.

While commending the health goal, participants in a hearing by the Consumer Affairs Committee questioned whether the green carts would hurt neighborhood supermarkets, bodegas and greengrocers.

The skeptics suggested other alternatives, such as allowing stores to set up their own fresh fruit and vegetable stands outside their premises, or providing tax incentives.

“It is going to cause harm,” said Councilman Miguel Martinez (D-Manhattan).

Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) questioned whether “this green cart proposal actually makes sense.”

“Maybe we should be licensing vendors to sell suits outside, and lingerie,” scoffed Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn).

And Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) cited the warring interests of merchants and street peddlers.

“Last year at this time, the price per bushel [of wheat] was $5.31,” said Jorge Delgado, counsel for H & H. “[This week] it was $14.22.”

David Jaffe, a sales rep from Fodera Foods in Queens, sells to roughly 70 Manhattan bagel shop and bakeries. His company may have to allocate goods based on customers’ payment history. “There is no raw material,” he said. “It’s crazy [to talk about allocations], but we’re getting there.”

He blamed price increases on the crop failure in Australia, which forced the Asian market to buy from here, compounded by Argentina not exporting wheat. Plus, more American farmers are switching to biofuels because of ethanol subsidies.

“We’re not in a good situation,” Jaffe said. “China is becoming Westernized and they don’t want to eat rice anymore, they want wheat. Basically, the whole baking industry is under attack and the hardest hit are those who use the most flour — bagels and bread.”

Steve Ross, president of Coney Island Bialys & Bagels, who has kept prices at 70 cents for nearly a year, has seen fluctuations befire, but never a such a steady rise. “It’s always stayed around $18 to $20 a bag,” he said. Ross is now paying $35 for a 100-pound bag. He found out yesterday that’s set to jump $3.

David Wilpon, manager of Ess-a-Bagel, said prices rose 10 to 85 cents in October and they were considering another hike. At Daniel’s Bagels on Third Avenue, Arye Lewkowitz raised prices last month to 90 cents.

Do some quick math on New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s proposed toll hikes on Garden State roads, and it gets ugly really fast. By 2022, just 14 years away, football fans could end up paying $27.92 roundtrip to take the New Jersey Turnpike to Exit 16W at Giants Stadium — and that’s not counting the toll on the Goethals Bridge.

Already slammed with recently passed toll increases on the Goethals and Bayonne bridges and the Outerbridge Crossing, Island motorists who regularly travel to New Jersey may find it a much harder pill to swallow if Corzine’s proposal to hike tolls on some of the state’s busiest roads every four years is passed into law.

Corzine announced last week a proposal to increase tolls 50 percent in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 on the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey Turnpike and Atlantic City Expressway. Those increases, which would also affect a new toll on Route 440, would include inflation adjustments. Tolls would be increased every four years between 2022 and 2085 to reflect inflation.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Bernardo Mendez of New Springville, clad in a New York Giants jacket. Mendez makes regular trips to New Jersey to go bowling, shop and go to Giants games, but will reconsider doing so if the tolls spike as much as proposed. “For people with a lot of money, they don’t care, but for people working very hard just to survive, it’ll make it very hard. It will definitely have an impact on going to New Jersey as often as I used to.”

On Wednesday, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to reduce the bonus that riders receive on pay-per-ride MetroCards, from 20 to 15 percent. The board also decided to increase some other fares.

The change in the bonus means many riders will see odd amounts of spare change — as little as a nickel or a dime — left over on their MetroCards. And if large numbers of exasperated riders throw away cards with balances of just 5 or 10 cents, the result could add up to a windfall to the authority in unclaimed fares.

The current 20 percent bonus system makes for simple math: Buy five rides and you get one ride free. In other words, if you feed $10 into a MetroCard vending machine, the card will come out showing a balance of $12.

Under the new plan, the minimum that riders must spend to qualify for a bonus will be reduced to $7, from $10, in an effort to put a fare discount within the reach of more people with lower incomes. But in that case, when someone puts $7 on a card, an additional $1.05 will appear on the card, for a total of $8.05.