Wednesday, February 3, 2016

With CleaNYC, Mayor de Blasio declares war on litter, graffiti


[Random 1st Avenue photo from last month]

Mayor de Blasio today announced the formation of CleaNYC, "a holistic effort to keep communities clean in all five boroughs."

Per ABC 7:

The effort will include stepped up Graffiti-Free NYC efforts, sidewalk power washing in commercial corridors, the expansion of Sunday and holiday litter basket collection service, and high shoulder/ramp cleanup.

Graffiti-Free NYC will remove graffiti from private and public structures, power wash sidewalks and remove stains from street furniture. The new Graffiti-Free NYC trucks will be equipped with power inverters, allowing the equipment to run without using the engines or gas-powered generators.

Per DNAinfo:

"This is so important for the lives of everyday New Yorkers for whom their neighborhood is the center of their life," de Blasio said. "It's so important for our small businesses, it's important of our economy. And the people of this city deserve nothing less than the cleanest city we can make it."

Under the plan, announced a day ahead of the mayor's State of the City address, the Department of Sanitation will increase litter basket pickups on Sundays and holidays by 40 percent in heavily trafficked areas starting April 1 by adding 20 more trucks.

Per a city news release announcing the initiative, CleaNYC will cost $4.2 million in expense funds in Fiscal Year 2017, and $2.5 million in capital funds.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can't "make" a city clean.
People want to live in a shit encrusted filth hole, they will "make" it that way. They do make it that way.

Scuba Diva said...

I had resisted calling our mayor "BloomBlasio," but this is too much. I first visited NYC in the 70s, when the big tourist slogan was "I Love New York," but it might as well have been, "Come for the graffiti, stay for the crime."

I love graffiti; I've always loved graffiti, and feel it's part of the city's legacy. I mean seriously; I could have saved a lot of money by never coming to the city at all. Who is he doing this for, anyway? (I for one don't want more tourists!)

Anonymous said...

Folks buying 2 milly luxury condos don't care for graffiti

cmarrtyy said...

I moved to the EV over 40 years ago. It was abandoned... burned and dirty. But somehow after all the years of gentrification... it's dirtier today... "bout time. DeB. 'bout time.

Gojira said...

If Bloomblasio really wants to clean up the scum in NYC, he needs to turn his attention to the real estate industry. The grime and graffiti can't even begin to hope to be as filthy as it is.

Anonymous said...

That portmanteau is terrible. "Clee-N-Y-C?" "Clean-Y-C?" Not every word needs to be smashed together with the one that follows because they share a letter. We're all adults here FFS, just say Anti-Graffiti Campaign.

Edmund Dunn said...

"Bloomblasio"

That's a keeper, thanks Gojira.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous cmarrtyy
I agree the city is filthier than it was 35 years ago when I came here. Louder too thanks to the population boom and the constraints construction, increase in large trucks servicing the city and insane traffic. The EV has been turned into the city's official nightlife center and a once quiet place has drunks yelling on the weekend day and night.

As for graffiti... why spend the money? Most landlords can afford to remove it today since they receive better than market rents and rip off rents from their commercial spaces. Besides if the graffiti is gone tourists can't take selfies with it and after all tourists are more important to the city than the residents who pay for everything with our tax dollars.

Anonymous said...

Newbies! Calm down. You have no idea what you are talking about. I've lived in the EV for over 40 years and hung out there in the days of the Filmore East and Electric Circus. What you see today has nothing to do with the legacy of the EV as a freewheeling hippie neighborhood. It was, is and will be a neighborhood of extremely mixed demographics. I came to this area as a child with grandparents who had friends still living there. It was always a gritty neighborhood, but people used to take pride in it until the 60's when it became labeled as a drug ridden neighborhood. Nobody takes pride in it..not the landlords, not the condo/coop owners, not the building supers and definitely not the business owners who are the worst offenders of all when it comes to trash.
Just walk along the avenues in the morning to see the trash piled up haphazardly, garbage bags broken and leaking, butts littering the barfronts, broken glass, paper plates, frozen yogurt cups...and on and on.
If Del Blase wants to do something for real, then have the Sanitation Dept hire more inspectors, enforce the laws, hand out summonses regularly and make the building owners and store owners responsible for keeping their property free of graffiti. Yes graffiti is an eyesore,...but more than that it is vandalism, plain and simple. Who gave the graffiti-doers permission to mar someone else's property? It is a lack of respect for another that causes this problem. They delude themselves by calling themselves "artists" when in reality they are completely without any talent and have no idea what a piece of art actually looks like. No doubt any of these self-deluded individuals would spray paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa if they had the chance and think it was a "happening."
So let's get real and instead of having the city spend huge amounts of our tax money on this problem (when they should be spending it on improving our schools, fixing roads, buying new bigger garbage receptacles and countless other needs) they put the burden on the building and store owners...after all , they are the ones who would benefit...so either charge them or make them pay.
Note to Anonymous...of course people who are buying multi-million dollar condos care.....the question is....why don't you care also?
And yes...you can make a city clean. Go to Europe...walk around Paris, Amsterdam, London...and you will see how clean it is. People don't live in shitholes as you put it....but you seem to want to do just that. You want the EV to remain that way? Guess what...you should find a different shithole to live in then because the residents of the EV don't want people like you living here making their neighborhood into a "shit encrusted filth hole". You can keep your apartment that way somewhere else.

Grandpa Simpson said...

Dear Newbies, I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted at EVG. We are not all vibrant, fun loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals who remember the good old days when graffiti was bland and inoffensive. The following is a list of words I never want to hear on this blog again. Number one: "artists." Number two: gritty. Number three: shit-encrusted filth-hole.

Makeout said...

@ Anon. 10:27- Wow. Longest comment ever.

Anonymous said...

You people don't understand graffitti because it's too hip, cutting edge, and artistic. It's literally what NYC is all about, literally.

Anonymous said...

Anon. 10:27: I agree with everything you wrote. Well said.

The graffiti has to go, along with the litter, mounains of trash bags, and the stickers and "moving" ads that litter every surface. All of this just creates an eyesore and sense of a neighborhood that does not care about itself.

Anonymous said...

Seems obvious that this initiative, like so many others, is mainly about doing everything possible to keep tourists happy and real estate prices high.

Anonymous said...

@ Grandpa Simpson... COOL!

Joey Blau said...

Some old graffiti was tolerable, but the dirty scribbles that have defaced our city for the last twenty years is just filth. Add a layer of nasty grease and car exhaust and dog crap and that is what the city looks like, in parts.

What is a government for if not to help the people keep clean? Crews should go down each commercial strip each day and each side street once a week. There should be public baths and showers staffed by nurses and janitors, and toilets. And actual soup kitchens were if you bring your own clean cup you get a few ladels of soup.

Getting rid of dirt and graffiti would be a great advance.

Anonymous said...

If only the Mayor had the same enthusiasm for getting rid of crime....

JAZ said...

"This is so important for the lives of everyday New Yorkers"

yeah, I think not having hot water or heat for months on end is kind of important for the lives or everyday New Yorkers, or landlords who refuse to address extermination needs in a timely manner. By comparison, we really don't give a shit about graffiti

Anonymous said...

City policies have unintended consequences, now landlords are off the hook for cleaning, why do it when the City will do it for free? Companies that remove the stuff will suffer too. Graffiti will stay on buildings longer as the city's estimate of 2-3 months for removal becomes 6 or more and landlords stop their removal plans. And they say it will cost about 6million this year, usually double their estimate would prove more accurate. And when the city budget is blown out, what services get cut first?