🚫🗑️ The No Dumping Spot

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello and welcome to the 1 new advocate of the Better Block Project bringing our group to 88 members. Thank you all for everything you do to make our neighborhood an incredible place to live.

Before we jump into our update, we’ve got some progress to share regarding preventing the drug use at the Fulton and Franklin Avenue Bus Stop 🚌 . Chi Osse’s City Council office has arranged a meeting on September 3rd with DSNY, DHS and NYPD and Phara Souffrant Forrest, the State Assembly Member representing the area, is also expected to attend. We’re optimistic this meeting can serve as a chance review the situation live and align on a permanent solution to the problem, so we can reclaim the bus stop for our community. In a brief conversation with NYPD, we’ve learned they are exploring taking down the seating of the bus stop to make it less attractive to shelter there. We’ll learn more at the meeting and report back on next steps!

🚫🗑️ The No Dumping Spot

Yesterday, we partnered up with street artist Felix Morelo to use his sidewalk art to raise awareness about dumping on Fulton Street. Felix has been a street artist for many years in New York. He was born here and grew up in Colombia, but considers himself a lifelong New Yorker. He’s most known for his “Good Luck Spot”, but he does other spots as well to raise awareness and spark conversation. We thought his art would be perfect to bring more attention to the pervasive dumping issue on Fulton, and hopefully have some persistent dumpers think twice before they did it again.

At 9:30am on Saturday morning, Felix and a group of us started on Franklin and Fulton Street, and then walked the block and created “No Dumping Spot” circles around the persistent trash we found. We drew spots on Franklin and Fulton, Spencer and Fulton, Bedford and Fulton, Nostrand and Fulton and New York Av and Fulton. We also posted fliers nearby to encourage residents to call 311 or email City Council if they wanted to clean up Fulton, and gave them information on the right way to dump their trash. See some of our work below, or check it out for yourself on Fulton Street 🧑‍🎨 

Originally, my expectation was at 9:30am on a Saturday morning the street likely wouldn’t be dirty yet, so our plan was to draw the circles to discourage trash from being put next to the bins in the first place. But, I was wrong. When we came up to the first corner, there were already 6 bags of trash illegally dumped there. We decided to pivot, and created the No Dumping Spots around the trash, to call attention to the high level of illegal dumping on the street.

The reaction to the art was mostly supportive, until Felix started drawing a circle around some old paper boxes strewn in front of a small business. We were briefly confronted by a couple of employees of the business, asking us to stop what we were doing. After some conversation (which was slightly heated…😅), we shared why we were there, and told them we were doing this to raise awareness about trash on Fulton Street. They respectively let us finish, and we went on our way.

After finishing up further down the block, we walked back by the same place where the confrontation had occured, only to find our “No Dumping Spot” was now empty with no trash. It was a small win, and a validating signal that art actually can make a difference.

I want to thank Felix for allowing us to use his art to send this message. If you’d like to purchase his art or collaborate with him on a project, feel free to message him on Instagram. I also want to thank Cristy, Caroline, Sam, Andrea and Cassey for making it out this morning, and Katie for the help reaching out to media. I left feeling energized and hopeful that we took a step forward in making the street cleaner.

🚛 Where We Are with DSNY

We continue to advocate directly with DSNY for an additional collection route and increased enforcement of illegal dumping on Fulton Street. This week, we heard back on the progress of their enforcement efforts since July 12th:

• There’s been 6 separate commercial trash summons for not having a private carter, sidewalk obstruction, failure to clean 18 inches into the street and more

• There’s been 9 separate residential trash summons for loose trash, trash placed out prior to collection time, broken and overflowing receptacles and more

We followed up to understand if this enforcement is increased from prior periods, as it’s hard to tell if it is more of the same, or actually making a difference. It’s our goal to continue to put pressure on DSNY to truly solve the problem until we achieve our goal of a fully clean Fulton Street.

🏃 Our Next Steps

We plan to continue to monitor the street and log 311s over the coming months to advocate for a cleaner street. The next big step for us is the coming City Budget cycle, with requests starting in November - December. If we can advocate for more budget for sanitation of Fulton Street, it means organizations like DSNY, the Bed Stuy BID and ACE can all have more funds to clean up the street. We believe this will result in a longer term change to ensure the street stays clean, permanently.

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

• 🌳 Simplifying Tree Maintenance in NYC: We had a great meeting with Council Member’s Gutierrez office on Monday discussing our primary policy ideas to improve the situation, including adding a no permit level to trim trees and making the existing tree work permit simpler. We’re also diving deeper to understand what budget the city would need to better manage the tree maintenance, so citizens no longer have to fill the gap

• 🚌 Improving the Bus Stop on Franklin and Fulton: As we noted above, the next big milestone here is the meeting with the City, State, DHS, DSNY and NYPD on September 3rd to align on solutions to the bus stop. Given the volume of feedback the city is hearing from residents, we’re optimistic the city will take real action to solve the problem

• 🏠️ Improving Vacant Buildings on Fulton, Jefferson and Macon: Work at 26 Jefferson Avenue continues to progress, and neighbors have seen some activity at 1105 Fulton since the demolition order has come down, but it’s unclear when this will officially proceed. Next week, we’re planning to follow up on potential buyers for 75 Macon to help occupy this property

That’s all for this week’s update. 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.

See you next week,

David