State of Trash on Fulton 🗑️, Jim Walden attending June 8th BBQ

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello and welcome to the 5 new subscribers this week of the Better Block Project, bringing our total group of advocates to 39!

This week, we officially launched Better Block’s website: betterblockproject.com. This will be the home for all of our updates and events moving forward. It will serve as a foundation to scale our work to more people and drive more impact in Brooklyn. From now on, you’ll see our emails come from [email protected] (no longer [email protected]).

🗑️ State of Trash on Fulton: Where we made progress this week

We made the most meaningful progress deep diving into the problem of trash on Fulton Street, one of the main commercial routes in Bed Stuy. For those who live in Bed Stuy, you probably frequent Fulton Street often to take the A/C trains 🚆, go to the grocery store or grab some Shake Shack 🍔. Unfortunately, the stretch of Fulton from Classon to Nostrand is frequently dirty, with 183 311 complaints about trash on the street over the last year. This week, I spoke with Ms. Dale Charles, the leader of the Bed Stuy Business Improvement District (BID), which aids in cleaning the street, and Chi Osse’s City Council office about the problem to understand why it is the way it is. Here is what I learned:

• Given the volume of individuals on the street and riders on eBikes, Fulton Street has become a magnet for trash ranging from people throwing out their lunch to individuals from out of the district dropping off residential garbage. People will literally open up their car doors to dump garbage on the street!

• Sanitation currently picks trash up 3 days per week, and the BID provides additional street cleaning services to supplement them. Despite this, even if the BID cleans an area of the street by 10am, it will often be dirty again by 11am, given the high volume of foot traffic

So, how do we fix the problem? After speaking with Ms. Dale Charles, we aligned on two primary recommendations this group should advocate for:

1. Asking sanitation to increase garbage pick-ups on the route from 3 days per week to 7 days per week. This would ensure garbage cans don’t overflow, and keep the street clean

2. Find additional funding from the City for 12-14 city bins, which are larger trash bins meant for the BID workers to hold the trash. With these bins, more of the trash can be containerized, keeping the street cleaner for longer

I spoke about both of these ideas with Chi Osse’s office, and was unfortunately told no. The conversation was frustrating, as after asking, “Why is Chicago able to have clean streets but New York can’t?”, their office communicated that Sanitation funding came from the Mayor’s office, and the City Council’s office couldn’t really do anything about it and was reluctant to partner with us to advocate for it. I also reached out to our District Manager at Community Board 3, and have yet to hear back (for visibility, I have emailed Community Board 3 leadership 4 times and have never received a reply from them…). I share these comments not to demonize the people working for these offices (many of them are nice), but I think it’s important to show you all how unresponsive the city is when it comes to solving these problems.

Despite this lack of support, we’re going to push forward to advocate for these solutions. The next steps with this problem are to reach out to block associations around Fulton street to build support for the problem (thank you Nicole from Bridge Street!), to then hold a community meeting in early July to rally with our elected officials and DSNY about these issues. Stay tuned! Separately, City Council did tell me that submitting more 311 complaints helps (apparently 183 is not enough…), you can do that here to drive awareness of the issue.

👔 NYC Mayoral Candidate Jim Walden joins our June 8th BBQ 🍔

We’re 1 week away from our Better Block Project Community BBQ on June 8th, and we now have 22 RSVPs 🥳 (RSVP here if you haven’t already) The exciting news from this week is Jim Walden, an independent candidate for Mayor, will be joining the BBQ to speak to our group. Jim is a former federal prosecutor, with a focus on organized crime, and he built a boutique law practice that helped secure $250M for emergency repairs for NYCHA residents. His campaign is focused on public safety, solving the housing crisis and driving economic growth. If you have specific topics you want to be sure are discussed with Jim, just reply to this email and let me know!

⏳ Where we are on the other problems we’re working on

I’m testing a new format for this update which deep dives on a single issue, but I still want to provide you all with visibility on where we are with the other problems we’re working on. See below a summary of what’s happened across the rest of the efforts the Better Block Project is advocating for.

• Improving vacant buildings on 26 Jefferson and 1105 Fulton: We were supposed to have a call with DOB this week, but they never reached out to us 🙄. We aim to connect with them this coming week, and in the meantime, are actively looking for attorneys to support this effort 

• Removing the Wasp’s Nest in Williamsburg: As we navigate the bureaucratic maze to solve this problem, the next step is getting a Certified Arborist to investigate the tree. We’re working on that right now, with the hopes to get the permit to remove the nest as soon as possible

• Protecting residents from Property Tax Reform: We spoke with representatives from Zohran Mamdani and Simcha Echenstein’s office this week. Neither office had a detailed understanding of the bill, suggesting nothing is likely happening with the current Assembly Bill A7061. Our plan is to focus our outreach on Assemblymember Braunstein (the bill sponsor) and Senator Gounardes, given they have demonstrated the most real understanding of this issue

• Repairing sidewalks impacted by tree roots in Crown Heights: Cassey is actively working with DOT to resolve the tree root issue, and we’ll provide an update as this investigation is completed

🤝 How you can help

1. If you can help with one of the problems above, just reply to this update! We’ve already had members assist each other on some of the problems we’re working on and I am excited by the value this network can provide everyone here

2. If you like what we’re doing here, share betterblockproject.com with other community members you know who are looking to drive change in Brooklyn

3. We’re still actively searching for attorneys to support our efforts. If you know anyone that might be interested (including law firms), reply to this update!

See you next week,

David