A rep from a co-op on East Seventh Street wrote in … noting that the building had been hit with a "plague of litter summonses" of late… all of them citing "litter within 18 inches of the curb."
The question: Any other people/buildings in the neighborhood getting fined ($100 for the first offense) like this?
The residents feel as if their building has been singled out (they have received two within 11 days).
We looked at this PDF at the Department of Sanitation for an explanation on enforcement …
Residential Premise Enforcement Routing
Under the Enforcement Routing Program, enforcement agents patrol all areas including commercial, industrial, manufacturing and residential blocks at specified times focusing on violations for dirty sidewalks, dirty areas and failure to clean 18 inches into the street. During the enforcement routing time, when enforcement agents observe a dirty sidewalk, dirty area or an 18-inch violation in front of/adjacent to a residential premise, a notice of violation will be issued. Although enforcement agents will issue notices for dirty sidewalk, dirty area, or failure to clean 18 inches into the street violations only during the specified 2 one-hour daily routing time periods, they may issue notices for all other violations at any time.
Residential Premises
Residential routing times citywide have been set as follows:
8:00 AM to 8:59 AM and 6:00 PM to 6:59 PM
This issue of the Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary from May 2014 has a footnote-heavy article titled "Fighting Dirty Sidewalk Tickets in New York City."
18 comments:
My feelings on this one are split. On one hand I noticed the neighborhood sidewalks have gotten pretty trashy in the past couple of years. The rise in filthy sidewalks may be due to the lack of supers in the recently sold of buildings and switch to management companies which send someone to clean these building one per week. The trash in front of these buildings seem to always blow down the street and land in front of mine which of course pisses me off when I get a summons. Yet another ill side affect of the gentrification and absent landlords dumped upon our neighborhood.
Yeah - the EV streets were always spotless in the 70s before gentrification.
The DOS is going "all-in" on violations lately. I live in the EV but work by City Hall and the inspector flat out admitted to a local door man "we are cracking down".
@10:20am: Save your snark for a situation that deserves it. Many East Village buildings were kept cleaner (inside & out) when the owners lived there, which is less and less frequently the case these days. This is a real change, and it's to the detriment of the streets and the neighborhood when the owner lives on Long Island or in NJ or CT, than when the owner actually lives onsite. I see the difference it makes on my own block - the owner-occupied buildings are much better kept in every respect than the absentee-owner buildings.
I am an owner/manager living in the EV and I also received the same fine from the city. It was the day after veterans day...the problem is that I have a lot of people/homeless hanging out around my building and some of them leave a lot of papers/cup in front. The city needs to spend their time finding solution for those unfortunate people instead of spending their time fining us...
Hey!!!! Here’s wondering can a food truck be hit with the same such violations??? I know one one food truck in particular that makes a nightly mess of our street and that’s the one on the corner of 11th st and first Ave.
The amount of trash being strewn from that truck all over the street is insane and it’s not the buildings or the buidiing owner’s producing the trash IT’S THE FOOD TRUCK!!!!
IT’S TIME TO GET THE TRUCK AND THE RATS OFF OUR STREET!!!!
About 7 years ago a handful of sanitation workers would invade my block on recycle day and would flip the transparent bags over repeatedly looking for anything that was not acceptable and then write a fine. I saw this with my own eyes and realized the city wants to bleed people for making a well intention mistake by putting a Tylenol bottle in the wrong bag. This wave will pass but it will costs us and not change a damn thing.
"...the EV streets were always spotless in the 70s before gentrification."
No, but before the early 1980's there was almost no enforcement of alternate side of the street parking rules anywhere east of Ave. A. If I remember correctly, sanitation put up notices stating that the rules would be enforced by such a certain date and expect to be ticketed.
I was shocked the first time I saw a street cleaning truck coming down my street.
There was one on my building's door last week (East 7th). I couldn't tell exactly what their complaint was because the handwriting was atrocious but they mentioned a plastic cup.
If they fine for little recycling mistakes, why don't they post a comprehensive list of where EVERYthing goes? They have basics on their website and poster, but I always have questions that are not covered there and am left to guess. Someone there should be compiling a master list so we can get it right. Glass makeup foundation bottle - recycling or trash? Tin foil hopelessly covered with some amount of stuck cheese - recycling or trash? Paper with just alittle speck of pizza grease on it. Etc.
If only the Sanitation Department paid more attention to the restaurants and bars along Second Avenue that constantly have their garbage, cigarettes, bottles, glasses, and assorted other detrius littering the streets every night. In the morning it looks like a slum in a third world country. How about ticketing them to get our neighborhood looking better?
They should fine UNION MARKET, who have stained the fucking sidewalk outside their business on Ave A.
They put their garbage out there, and never, ever clean the sidewalk, so it is stained black with sticky trash sludge. Carpetbaggin', overpriced grocery store, respect your neighborhood!
This is a way to squeeze the last of the small building owners out so the big boys can take everything over. The big corps don' bother cleaning and the $100 a pop is a drop in the bucket for them. The smaller owner however, with the one building and rent controlled and stabilized apartments who lives in the building takes a big hit when these start piling up.
I've had security cameras installed and caught the agents writing false tickets. All the judge says is the time and date stamp on your video camera could be wrong. They have an out for every situation. Last time I showed a guy writing a ticket at 7 when his route starts at 8 the judge said his watch was probably off but the fine was not dismissed.
They embellish on the tickets by saying crap like contents of an ashtray spilled on stoop when there was one butt on there. Their famous matted papers is a code word they use to make it look like the stuff has been near the curb for days and no reasonable effort is made to clean the property. The city is just enforcing for revenue and not to keep the city clean.
I have received tickets for tenants leaving a cap on a plastic bottle inside the recycling bag. It is a shakedown of epic proportions.
I spoke to my super today, he now has to come take out the garbage at 8 am instead of the night before. He keeps getting $100 tickets for assholes dropping their starbucks cup on the pile of garbage bags. This is a top down effort. DiBlasio Admninistration is turning out to be a big pile of shit. We're gonna end up with TRump running the world.
The 7-11 on Avenue A is also a source of much garbage - not only is the trash can on that corner filled to overflowing, 11th between A and B is a positive riot of cups, pizza boxes, and whatever other packaging they sell their slime in. On the sidewalk, in planters, tossed atop garbage cans, in bike baskets - you name it, 7-11 effluvia is there.
There was a NY1 For You piece on this absurdity. It is nearly impossible to fight, are you supposed to sit on your curb all day every day to make sure a piece of litter doesn't blow by it? People need to fight the city on this and make it stop. Imagine if they cleaned up the vagrants instead of this nonsense.
Hello...my name is Richard Garey. My family owns a townhouse in the Bronx and we received a $300 fine for our first offense relative to the 18" rule. This incident was covered by NY1: http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/ny1-for-you/2015/07/10/ny1-for-you--bronx-homeowner-fined-for-piece-of-litter-on-street-in-front-of-his-curb.html We hired an attorney to fight the fine. Ultimately, it ended up being dismissed relative to a technicality on the ticket. We were pleased that this particular ticket was dismissed however not particularly content with the fact that the judgement still left it open for the Department of Santitation to issue this particular summons again in the future.
Hi - I live in Harlem and we recently got a ticket for the 18 inch into the curb rule. The sidewalk was swept at 630am and the area was cleaned. Apparently, either someone tossed two pieces of toilet paper in between two cars or they blew in. Net result we get a $100 ticket from sanitation at 815am
I talked to the agent and he insisted that one has to check everyday between 8am to 9am and 6 to 7pm and make sure nothing is there to avoid the tickets. He argued that our block does not have that much foot traffic and so we should be able to keep it clean during those times. For general litter like bottles and garbage that people walking by typically throw on the sidewalk with abandon, this may be something a homeowner may be able to keep up with, but pieces of paper that blow around in the wind and land within 18 inches of the curb seems really impractical. Seems like this is jsut a way for the city to make money off you, when there is no recourse. I saw Richard Garey's post above and saw that he was able to get the fine dismissed. Any suggestions as to how to deal with the ticket as well as the situation would be appreciated
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