Business Districts Balk at Trash Container Rule, Citing Costs and Future Fines
By and | Editorial credit: HM Scott / shutterstock.com
The groups that clean up the city’s commercial corridors say they already do the Sanitation Department’s job for them and shouldn’t be punished with onerous new garbage mandates.
Business improvement districts around the city are flipping their lids over a proposed rule they say would jeopardize their clean-up work on the city’s streets — and possibly even force some to stop their garbage pickup altogether.
The Department of Sanitation proposed a new rule for trash storage on Dec. 30, specifically aimed at entities that sweep or clean sidewalks, plazas and streets “for the purpose of supporting local businesses or communities.” The new rule, which covers the city’s 75 business improvement districts, would require containers for garbage and banning bags of refuse being set out.
Leaders of some of the city’s BIDs — which tax businesses in their zones in exchange for supplemental services like trash collection — say complying with the rule would be too expensive and burdensome. They say they have limited space to put the containers, the requirements would necessitate more workers and they’d fear hefty fines that could stretch their limited budgets — and haven’t been consulted in coming up with the rule.
The rule is the latest step in the city’s “trash revolution” to swap out unsightly mounds of trash — which attract rats and other vermin — for orderly and closed containers. The BIDs are in favor of that overall goal, but doubtful of the specifics on how to make it happen.
“We’re picking up city garbage for the Sanitation Department, for the city of New York,” Madelyn Wils, the interim president of the Fifth Avenue Association in Manhattan, told THE CITY. She’s concerned about where they could place trash bins, saying there’s no space to leave them out on Fifth Avenue and only limited side streets.
“We would like to see more partnership,” she added.
Laura Rothrock from the Long Island City Partnership said she and other BID leaders felt “there was a lack of understanding from sanitation of how BID services work.”
She and others also pointed to a November City Council hearing on containerization that then-Santiation Commissioner Jessica Tisch dipped out of early to go downstairs for her sudden announcement as police commissioner — even though the point was to hear concerns about the program.
“We wanted to come to the table but DSNY was not meeting us at the table,” she said.
DSNY spokesperson Joshua Goodman said that senior agency staff listened to every comment at the council hearing and held multiple meetings with BIDs.
Clean Corners
While some BIDs tidy the trash and wait for DSNY to pick it up, others bring the trash to sanitation transfer sites themselves. They say to continue doing the transport, they will likely have to place some bags on the street.
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership manages three BIDs and oversees trash removal along multiple bustling streets with 167 Big Belly garbage bins and 41 other corner cans.
Two pickup trucks run five routes a day picking up trash to bring to the sanitation department’s depot in Gowanus — a trip that could take up to two hours and means bags could be left on street corners, resulting in fines, said Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.
“The idea that we would be punished for doing work that the Sanitation Department does not have the capacity to carry out in our district is crazy,” she said.
In an email, another DSNY spokesperson Vincent Gragnani said the rule helps advance the goal of having “zero bags of trash on the streets.”
“New Yorkers deserve clean streets. Neither businesses, nor residents nor any other entity should be allowed to leave bags of trash on the street,” Gragnani said. “Other cities around the world have been doing this for decades — we are certainly not the first.”
Some BIDs are already using containers. Tiera Mack, executive director of Pitkin Avenue BID in Brooklyn, received $28,000 in grants over two years and purchased 13 containers — which hold about a third of the bags her workers pick up — plus cleaning supplies and plants for the planters on top.
“It is expensive and it is hard,” Mack said, adding she can only do containerization when she has two workers on shift. And she’s had to deal with people moving the bins off the street to the sidewalks, where DSNY might not be able to access them.
On Monday, Mack reported piles of bags left around a mailbox on her BID corridor to 311. She’d hoped DSNY would take care of it but considered telling her workers to put it in the containers — even if it meant they would run out of room.
“Everything becomes BID trash once it’s on the corridor, even if it’s illegal dumping, even when you can identify it as construction garbage,” Mack said, adding her BID might get fined for bags others left out when the rule goes into effect.
Airing Concerns
A public hearing on the rule is scheduled for Feb. 10, where BID leaders say they plan to share their concerns, before the rule takes effect Aug. 1. BIDs and other entities have been meeting with DSNY ahead of the hearing.
James Ellis, who manages the North Flatbush Avenue BID in Brooklyn, said his board talked about ending garbage pickup altogether.
“It will lead to a few BIDs — if not many — ceasing operations programmatically around corner bins and sanitation,” he said. “My board is certainly very seriously considering that decision process.”
One group that also fears the rule will complicate their work is the Association of Community Employment Programs, or ACE, which employs 160 people — many who dealt with challenges like homelessness, incarceration and substance use — to pick up garbage and keep sidewalks clean in most of the council districts throughout the boroughs.
ACE Executive Director James Martin said DSNY estimated his organization would need to buy over 200 containers for a cost of about $4.7 million. That doesn’t count the cost of maintenance or labor.
“That’s an outrageous number. When I saw it I almost fell out of my chair,” Martin said. “This is an existential crisis for ACE.”
Even grassroots community groups say the rule will hinder their efforts to clean and beautiful their neighborhoods.
Catie Savage, founder of the Hells Kitchen-based volunteer-run group, the Litter Legion, said her organization can’t afford to purchase bins, and isn’t clear where they’d go even if she could get them. Instead, the group puts litter it picks up into trash bags and leaves them next to wastebaskets or on corners for DSNY to handle.
“Those bags aren’t abandoned. Those bags are purposely left there as that’s the easiest collection point for sanitation, because baskets can be emptied at least once a day, everywhere, and in some areas, they’re emptied more frequently than that,” Savage said. “I understand the value of containerization, but I feel like this is just pushing it too far.”
The threat of fines won’t put a damper on the work she’s doing, though: “Realistically, I’m not going to stop,” she said. “Give me a ticket.”
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