🗑️ Trash Talk with DSNY and 💸 How Payments Slow Down Solving the Problem

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello and welcome to the 10 new advocates of the Better Block Project! Our total group of advocates is now 69 individuals who are committed to driving positive change on our blocks 🏡 .

🗑️ Trash Talk with DSNY

This past Wednesday night, more than 20 of us huddled in the basement of St. Peter Claver Church to brainstorm how we could 🧹 clean up Fulton Street and tackle the never-ending trash that litters it daily. Representatives from DSNY, Council Member Chi Ossé’s office, and the Bed-Stuy BID all joined. Somewhat poetically, a 🐀 rodent made a surprise appearance midway through the meeting — scurrying out the door after startling a few attendees. There wasn’t any debate about the problem — the group unanimously agreed that illegal dumping was the primary problem impacting the street. After all, the photos don’t lie:

We spent most of the session discussing why it is so hard to solve this challenge. We learned a few things:

• When a business dumps illegally and DSNY gives tickets for enforcement, many landlords just decide to absorb the cost and dump anyways

• When an individual dumps illegally, DSNY can only ticket them if they catch them in person. So, if someone submits a 311 complaint and DSNY shows up 3 hours later to address it, that individual is no longer there to ticket

To address the illegal dumping, the Bed Stuy BID and ACE both provide supplemental trash clean up, this has its own issues:

• To containerize all the trash, the Bed Stuy BID has started to use City Bins which are accessible only by the BID and placed on the street. While more of these bins would help, they are often damaged and there is community opposition to placing more bins, as they block parking spots

• To keep up pace with all of the illegal dumping, the BID estimates they need roughly double the staff they have today (6 to 12 employees), but they do not have budget for this and often have to cobble together funding from different sources to provide their services

Despite these challenges, we’re still committed to taking action to solve this problem. After all, plenty of streets in New York have solved the problem of trash, we can solve it on Fulton Street 💪. We aligned on the following next steps:

1. 🧑‍🎓 Education: We at the Better Block Project are going to do an Education walk on the street in August to educate businesses on the problem, communicate how they can avoid fines and get them to commit to help solve the trash problem with us. Details to come in next week’s update

2. 👮 Enforcement: We have a formal ask for DSNY to do a ticketing ⚡️ blitz ⚡️over the next 3 months on key intersections (e.g., Fulton and Nostrand) to discourage illegal dumping

3. 🚛 Dedicated Pickup Route: We have a formal ask for DSNY to add a dedicated collection route for Fulton street. In speaking with the sanitation managers that own Fulton from Classon to Marcy, they believe this could solve the problem

4. 💵 More Funding for the BID: The BID is a bright spot in garbage collection, so we want to advocate for more funding to give them 6 additional workers to clean the street. The next budget request cycle doesn’t start until November, but we’re preparing the ask now so we can be ready

Better Block is going to push on all of the above until we get this problem solved. Look for a date in next week’s email for our upcoming educational walk, we’ll end with a happy hour because well, we’ll deserve it 💅. In the meantime, if you want to help on your own, please submit 311 complaints every time you see trash and email the City Council’s office ([email protected]) expressing your concern. The more people they hear from, the more likely we will see change.

💸 How Payments is Slowing Down Solving the Problem

In every problem we try to tackle with Better Block, we often uncover systemic issues that make issues harder to solve and represent bigger opportunities for NYC to just work better. We’ve learned that lack of enforcement and the slow pace of government are recurring challenges in why quality of life issues seem to never get solved. At Wednesday’s meeting, we learned how the slow speed of payments prevents organizations from operating properly.

One of the organizations responsible for cleaning trash on the corridor described how they were approved for $20,000 from the Department of Transportation in 2020 to aid with operating their organization, and subsequently, clean up efforts of the street. This $20,000 is only just arriving today, 5 years later after 3 separate applications to get the money. How can we expect organizations to do their jobs if we can’t actually give them the money in time to do the work?

This isn’t an isolated issue. Justin Brannan, City Council Finance Chair, was aiming to combat a similar problem of non-profits not receiving their payments. Based on a City and State article, the city owed non-profits over $1B and many payments went back years. Justin was demanding the city pay every non-profit within 30 days.

Dmitri Dadimov, former CEO of Modern Treasury, a payment technology company, said it right in this Tweet:

If we improve the payment ops of NYC government, we’ll better support all of the organizations that execute the work and in turn see better results for our community.

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

• 🏠️ Protecting Residents from Property Tax Reform: We finally were able to get time scheduled with Assemblymember Braunstein tomorrow, July 14th, and Senator Gounardes’s office on Thursday, July 24th. These are two of the most important influencers in Property Tax Reform on the state level, so if you’d like to be in these conversations to advocate for more affordability, reply and I can add you to the invites.

• 🏢 Improving Vacant Properties on Fulton, Jefferson and Macon: We learned that 26 Jefferson was actually sold in May, so we’re trying to meet with the new owner to advocate for improving the property. We also learned 75 Macon will be sold, so if anyone you know on your block is interested in purchasing the property, reply and I can share the process the city is pursuing. Our next big moment will be our walk with HPD on 7/22.

• 🐝 Enabling Residents to Make Their Own Tree Repairs: Following solving the Wasp’s nest problem, we’re now aiming to engage with NYC Parks and other City leaders about a policy change to enable residents to make small repairs to trees on their own. If you know anyone in these departments that can help us advocate for this policy change or has feedback, please reply and connect me! If you have run into issues with trees on your block, reply. We want to build a group of neighbors advocating for this specific issue.

• 🚌 Improving the Bus Stop on Franklin and Fulton: We’re planning to work with the Department of Transportation and the local block associations to ensure the city addresses the dire situation at the Franklin and Fulton bus stop and open-air drug use. This is unacceptable on our streets, and we’re going to push the city to come up with a permanent solution so we can reclaim this public space.

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