Sanitation Issues Head Agenda At Board 1 Cabinet
Assemblymember Michael Gianaris and representatives of the Department for the Aging, AHRC-NYC and Food Bank for NYC all took a back seat to sanitation, the last item on the agenda at the November meeting of the Community Board 1 cabinet. When the talk turned to snow removal, trash collection and summonses for failure to comply with Department of Sanitation rules, the polite and attentive audience at Kaufman Astoria Studios became passionate, with anecdotes and complaints erupting and cross-talk becoming so pervasive that Board 1 District Manager Lucille Hartmann repeatedly had to call for order.
Gianaris had been in Albany for much of the week, “ostensibly to vote for a $3-4 billion budget”, he said, admitting that previously he had voted against the budget. Under stressful economic conditions, he must now settle for it. Next year will be even worse, he said. He referred to several recent hospital closings in Western Queens and mentioned the need for Mount Sinai Queens in Astoria to build a nine-story addition to its facilities. He said Mount Sinai Queens should receive state funds similar to those of its parent, Mount Sinai in Manhattan. Speaking of health plans being considered at the federal level, he said that the latest one would draw money away from New York state because it already treats the uninsured and money must go to states that currently do not; concluding that good deeds don’t go unpunished.
Darnley Jones, speaking for the city Department for the Aging, enumerated several of its services after citing the department as the largest of its kind in the United States and one that is in touch with all other such departments. He said that in Queens alone, there are 70 senior centers where meals are available to the aging population for $1. Men and women at the department serve as advisors to seniors faced with eviction, while others offer shopping assistance that allows seniors to go to distant shops on school buses during off hours (10 a.m. to 1 p.m.). He said that seniors could get red dots indicating their status placed on their residential mailboxes. If mail should accumulate, the red dot indicates that an investigation is in order.
Hal Rosenbluth of Kaufman Astoria Studios noted that the most outstanding recent event, celebrated nationally, is the 40th anniversary of “Sesame Street”, the Public Broadcasting System’s children’s program that has been broadcast from Kaufman Astoria since 1994. Across 35th Avenue, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts is open and functioning and overhaul of the Museum of the Moving Image should be completed within a year. Rosenbluth introduced Tracey Capune as the studio’s new vice president of communications. She will be making reports at future meetings.
Shaye Brown of AHRC-NYC, formally the Association for the Help of Retarded Children, said the organization uses only its initials now, the complete name being superannuated. AHRC takes care of developmentally disabled adults as well as children. For example, they coach clients who are entering the job force and, when such clients are sufficiently accommodated, they withdraw.
Roxanne Henry of Food Bank for NYC, said food distribution is not the bank’s only activity; a senior feeding program and one relating hunger and finances are others. In School District 30, she said, a high percentage of children qualify for food aid, particularly free breakfasts, but only a low percentage take advantage of the program. In January, Action Day will occur, bringing attention to this condition, Henry said.
Bill Doak, superintendent of QW-1, the sanitation district for one section of Western Queens, began his report with a snow removal alert for the coming winter. He has 10 spreaders for salt and snow-melting chemicals, mainly for use on the major highways. There are 35 to 38 reception trucks ready to take snow away. His remarks on the hours for putting out trash and recyclables or when snow must be removed from sidewalks drew the most controversy.
Trash or recyclables should be put out for pickup on the night preceding the morning collection, that night beginning at 6 p.m. Putting trash and recyclables out in the morning is not likely to have a positive result, since the truck might already have been there and gone. As for snow removal, residents must shovel a reasonable pathway on the sidewalk within four hours of the time snowfall stops. If snow is falling at 9 p.m. but has stopped by 9 a.m. the following morning, it must be removed by 1 p.m.
The possibility that snow might be falling in the morning, when designated shovelers are going off to work, leaving no one at home to remove snow was the first objection raised. Doak said that households must have a plan that would enable snow removal during any time period when it must be removed. Who removes snow from sidewalks beside building sites, one person asked, suggesting there were many such sites. Jerry Walsh of the Dutch Kills Civic Association lamented the moving of the 4 p.m. trash and recyclables start time to 6, saying that old persons needed daylight hours.
The matter of litter was brought up. George Stamatiades of DKCA repeated his strong suggestion that all litterers should be arrested and made to do four weekends of community service while wearing yellow vests of shame. Several brought up a problem on 36th Avenue: at the intersections with 29th, 31st and 33rd Streets, and perhaps at other sites along the way, street baskets are bulging with household trash left there, it is assumed, by apartment dwellers during morning commuting time. Ed Cadiz, a district activist also maintained that he has more than once seen Sanitation men pick up a basket on 36th Avenue and put it in the crusher. Doak contributed an anecdote about catching an older woman putting household trash in a street basket. He made her remove it and, when he began to drive away, saw she was about to drop it in again. He stopped her and waited for her to walk away, but said it was likely she brought it back for deposit when he had finally left.
A sergeant with Sanitation explained clean-up rules for storeowners. First, they must post hours of business for each day open. Then they are obliged to clean up the area in front of their premises, up to 18 inches into the street. This task is to be done within the hour before closing each day and within an hour after opening.
