Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Reader report: The trash at PS 15



An East Fourth Street resident shares this via the EVG inbox...

This is the chronic garbage situation on East Fourth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D outside PS 15.

The top photo is the garbage that was put out on Friday afternoon and sat there all weekend until it was picked up yesterday. This is the norm. The bottom 2 photos are what was left AFTER the garbage pickup — a smaller, but still disgusting mess.





As you can see, the school puts out a slew of garbage bags and has created a dump site on the block. Apparently, they are held to a different standard and have a different garbage pickup schedule than residents on the block. This situation has created a major rat problem on the block and in the nearby community gardens. Rats can be seen swarming this mess at night and in the early morning. No amount of calls to 311 is bringing any improvement.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

There must be a different standard because my landlord has gotten tickets for far, far less unbundled garbage, and the enforcement agents never seem to miss an opportunity. I would forget 311 and send some date-stamped pictures by certified mail, to higher ups at the Department of Sanitation, and maybe to the Mayor's Office. Who is picking up the garbage, the city or private contractors? Who is putting out the garbage? There's probably some rule that you can only put garbage out on the street the night before the pickup, but you'd have to track it down...

Anonymous said...

Perhaps calls to ALL of the TV networks will bring some change. Seriously, nothing seems to work like TV cameras...

Anonymous said...

Yaaa! As Dirty and Disgusting as I remember it when I went to school there 50 years ago..Some things never change.

Gojira said...

Same story at the school on 12th between 1st and A. Piles of trash under the eternal construction scaffolding which festers nicely as it's left for days.

Anonymous said...

I have been an homesteader on that block for 30years. We have lodged many complaints over the years about the garbage pit outside PS 15. With the city - with the board of education. And nothing ever happens. One little piece of litter outside your building and you get a ticket from the city. The maintenance crew at that school are pigs. And they seem to have all the power to not give a fuck.

Anonymous said...

If the neighb was rid of raccoons and coyotes, then garbage bags put in the street would not get ripped open like that.

Hey19 said...

same with the school on B and 6th, right? it seems all the schools are a mess. I imagine they must just produce so much trash though.

Anonymous said...

When a school gets a ticket, who pays it? Since it probably doesn't generate any income for the city there's not much incentive to issue tickets. If it were in my backyard I might pay someone once to clean up the garbage. Then I would sue the school, and the custodians individually (not sure how you find out there names, perhaps a FOIL request), in small claims court for the $50 or so I paid for the clean up. I guarantee that would get their attention.

Anonymous said...

Some of the garbage is not from the school, like those white plastic bags and the pizza box. Some people can help out the community by throwing that kind of garbage in the proper garbage cans, not on top of other garbage bags.

Anonymous said...

The entire EV is a garbage dump. You cannot walk a block without seeing or smelling the proliferation of garbage in the EV. The Sanitation Dept does not have enough trash cans on the corners to receive the amount of trash generated by the nightly visitors who don't give a damn what they do and could care less about making an unsightly mess of other peoples neighborhoods. They eat, drink, litter, puke and litter some more before getting into their cars to go back to where they came from. You think Trump is ready to ban people from America? Let him start by banning the Bridge and Tunnel Crowd to the EV

Anonymous said...

The rats sure do enjoy the buffet there at night. I have seen so many! And there was a whole swarm of rats--maybe about 20--in the little community garden on the corner of 12th and B, too, the other night. I wonder if they are getting into the composting bins. I was shocked to see them. Does anyone know who runs that community garden on 12th and B? I think they need to stop leaving the composting bins out.

Anonymous said...

There is also a trash problem at Au Zatar on the corner of 12th and A. There was yet another bag of trash sitting on the 12th Street side of the restaurant yesterday morning. It was torn open, and there was a fish on the sidewalk. The restaurant wasn't open for business, but there were workers inside and no one came out to clean up the mess. It sat there for hours. The sidewalk from the restaurant's side door to the spot where they put the trash is also regularly littered with liquid and food debris. I don't know how they don't get ticketed.

cmarrtyy said...

11:22

Have to agree. The EV is a dump. It was cleaner in the early '70s when I moved here. Streets filled with garbage is a slap in the face to every one who lives, works and visits the city. Sad to say it's a failure in basic human dignity. We have elected politicians who only care about working for the party in power more than the citizens who they are sworn to serve. This comes down to the tyranny of one party rule that can dismiss complaints and ideas that don't fit their orthodoxy. There are 3 solutions: open primaries, don't vote party line and sad to say bend down and pick up the trash.God did I just say that?!

Anonymous said...

It's not just a different standard, it's a different city agency responsible. An interesting thing to note is that in the first picture, there is a branch on top of the bags. You can't see it in the 2nd or 3rd pictures, but the branch was moved off the bags and now lies beside the school.

Anonymous said...

What is crazy is the city wants people to put plastic bags of trash on the curb all night. It only feeds the rats and encourages lazy jerks to just dump more trash on top of the trash bags. What we need are large bins (recycle, compost, trash) centrally located on each block that is continually picked up... Multiple times a day. All buildings, business, schools, etc, on one service.
As it is now we have Dept of Sanitation for residents, many different private contractors for business, DoS for schools... But with Dept of Ed janitorial Union handling the school trash on disconnected schedules.
And don't forget DSNY also plows the snow... So no trash & recycle pickup for days/weeks in winter. Ugh, there has to be a better way.

Anonymous said...

SAME thing at School on 6th and B.. Would be better if they had Dumpsters..

Anonymous said...

Same thing as the school on B @ 6th street, plus they have the crazy loud alarm that goes off every morning around 6 am. So annoying!!

Grant said...

Here's what I did in my neighborhood, Mott Haven. First I spoke with the school. Apparently the janitor works his way through the school cleaning at the end of the day and brings garbages out one at a time. The garbage route for the school has the truck picking up around 5pm. The janitor is not finished until 7 or 8pm. So any bags brought out after pickup will sit overnight until the next day.
Next I walked down the the Sanitation headquarters here in the South Bronx with two of my neighbors. Each neighborhood has their own supervisor. Fortunately for us he was there, not out and about giving tickets. I don't know if it was because we were three but he was on our block within an hour speaking with the school. He changed their pickup to a later time. He also gave us his phone number. Occasionally I would call when school trash missed and he would send a truck by.
There was also a daycare around the corner who's trash would be all over the block. I spoke with them and they were kind of rude. The supervisor spoke with them as well and changed their trash pickup spot to right in front of the daycare. They were previously instructed to put their garbage half way down the block so sanitation would have one stop on the block. And guess what? Things got better!
I find that 311 is just an exercise in frustration. Finding out who is responsible and making a human connection, shaking their hand, making eye contact is a much better way. (only down side is it take time!)

Anonymous said...

Grant @ 10:13, that is great what you were able to accomplish and having the personal connection is so true. Do you happen to know what the best hours to try to buttonhole the neighborhood supervisors are? Anyone who does it for this neighborhood will probably have to go to 137 Centre Street...the garage for our District is at Pier 36 and not normally accessible to the public, afaik.

Anonymous said...

This is an ongoing problem in Alphabet City (yea, I know but that's what it was called when I got here so....) and not only in front of public schools but also in front of public housing.

All to often, just like in front of PS 15, there are several inches of food garbage left on the ground after Sanitation picks up on both the E 4th and E 3rd Street sides of Brachetti Plaza, located between B & C or just up the street. So we have the pleasure of walking through two blocks of garbage coming and going.

Because government doesn't fine government (NYCHA, DOE & DOS), there's no incentive for them to do better. The Mott Haven person, however, who wrote about meeting up with the school and sanitation department is correct. We do it at least once a year and things get better but, in recent years, never great. Unfortunately, there have been 4 or 5 different custodians at PS 15 in the last two years and each has also been assigned to two schools at a time which contributes to the problem. So, yet another meeting.....

Patapsco Jones said...

I recently got fed up with the situation in front of PS 15, as well as the accumulated trash that nobody picks up in front of the adjacent El Jardin del Paraiso, and started contacting different authorities. Namely 311, State Senator Daniel Squadron and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez.

I got nothing but an autoreply email from Councilwoman Mendez. 311 sent a Department of Sanitation inspector by the next business day but he contacted me to say the mess had already been cleaned up. Apparently that morning someone had taken care of it and talked to the school officials after State Senator Squadron's office had intervened. They were the most responsive and emailed me back about the issue before and after the garbage had been removed.

Obviously this is an ongoing problem. So I recommend contacting Squadron going forward.