2020
Caribbean L 8 ife, October 16-22, 2020
Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams (second from left) with Bushwick
community residents. Brooklyn Borough President’s Offi ce / Hercules Reid
Boro president joins series of
corridor cleanups in Bushwick
By Nelson A. King
Brooklyn Borough President Eric
Adams on Oct. 4 joined Bushwick residents
and local stakeholders from the
Cornelia Street Block Association and
Goodwin Place in launching a series of
neighborhood corridor cleanups.
Adams said the clean-ups are conducted
in partnership with Brooklyn
Community Board 4 (CB 4) and organizations
like Clean Bushwick Initiative
and Bushwick Youth Coalition.
The borough president said the event
came in response to recent drastic budget
cuts at the New York City Department
of Sanitation (DSNY), “which has
resulted in skyrocketing complaints
about litter, overflowing trash cans,
and other sanitation issues throughout
Brooklyn and the rest of the city.”
Adams also called for DSNY to adapt
to their new budgetary reality by overhauling
their response to sanitation
issues and integrating more real-time
tracking tools.
“Communities across our borough
are contending with a major rise in
sanitation issues, which have affected
the bottom lines of already-struggling
small businesses and quality-of-life for
our residents,” he said. “Letting New
Yorkers’ trash complaints fester in the
trash pile of bureaucracy is unacceptable
at any time, and it’s even more dangerous
amid a pandemic and economic
recovery effort.
“While DSNY is struggling to adapt
to a new budgetary reality, I have
outlined clear steps they can take to
engage with communities on particular
areas of concern and modernize their
outdated operations,” Adams added.
“We can’t continue employing an eighttrack
mindset in a smart phone age,
especially at a time when our resources
are already stretched thin.”
Earlier this year, the Adams noted
that the City cut more than $100 million
to DSNY’s budget due to the fiscal
shortfall stemming from the COVID-19
pandemic.
He said the cuts resulted in a dramatic
reduction during the summer
— from 736 to 272 — in the number
of trucks emptying out litter collection
baskets on city streets every week.
In roughly the same period, Adams
said complaints about dirty sidewalks
on the City’s 311 hotline hit 2,922 in
July and August, up 14 percent from the
same period a year ago.
Missed trash collection complaints
are also surging across the city, Adams
said.
Earlier this month. Gov. Andrew
Cuomo proposed sending in the National
Guard to New York City to help address
rising sanitation issues throughout the
boroughs.
Adams said at the press conference
that he would welcome such assistance
in the immediate term, but that it
would need to be coupled with structural
overhauls in the way DSNY collects
trash and engages with communities.
He also highlighted a recent report
by New York State Comptroller Thomas
DiNapoli finding that DSNY only uses
Scorecard Ratings to monitor cleanliness,
“a practice that dates back to 1973
and fails to account for other sources of
data that are more up-to-date.”
In order to make DSNY more responsive
to community concerns, Adams
laid out a five-point plan: Modernize
DSNY’s cleanliness assessment and
integrate 311 complaints/violation summons
data.