Results tagged “sanitationdepartment”

After January hype - which resulted in rain - and a brief moment of snow last week, a winter snow storm finally made an appearance this year. Two weather disturbances resulted in many inches of snow falling in the region: By 2PM, more than 6 inches fell in the city, which is the biggest snowfall in two years and the biggest daily snowfall on the books (old record: 5.7 inches in 1948).

Yesterday the NY Post warned non-recyclers that they'd have to don a "scarlet litter" if they didn't clean up their acts. We hoped this "scarlet litter" would be a hat hand-crafted by a Freegan and worn atop the heads of the environmentally-challenged, but instead it's something much more sensible: a clear bag for all of your garbage that leaves little to the imagination. New York, we don't really want to see your trash, so please try to figure out this whole recycling thing, m'kay?

If warnings and summonses do not induce residents to separate their recyclables from the rest of the trash, the city will force them to put all their garbage into clear plastic bags and endure routine inspections.

Continue reading "City Shames the Non-Green"

Hot on the heels of 6-year-old Natalie Shea being caught and fined for chalking up her sidewalk, a second chalker has been nabbed! This one, Ellis Gallagher, is older -- so his punishment was a bit more serious. Seriously! For chalk! The dusty, porous sedimentary rock that leaves markings which wash away in the rain. The Brooklyn Paper reports:

The city’s crackdown on sidewalk chalk “vandals” is officially out of control! It was bad enough when the Sanitation Department threatened the parents of a 6-year-old Park Slope girl with a $300 fine if they did not remove the offensive "graffiti” — her sidewalk chalk drawings on their own front stoop.

Continue reading "Second Sidewalk Chalker Nabbed!"

Ah, City Councilman Peter "I hate graffiti" Vallone weighs in on the chalk "graffiti" made by 6-year-old Natalie Shea on her home's front stoop. Back in 2005, Vallone introduced the law that requires property owners to clean up graffiti, so when a neighbor called 311 to complain about Natalie's drawings (again, mind you, on her own stoop, not a neighbor's stoop), her parents got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation.

Five architectural firms have banded together to brainstorm ideas for adding green space to the far west side from the Village to Tribeca, also known as Hudson Square. A plan to add more garbage trucks to the neighborhood, writes Downtown Express's Patrick Hedlund, led local stakeholders to elicit architectural visions. Five firms - Arquitectonica GEO , FLAnK, LTL Architects, SPaN and Zakrzewski + Hyde (in association with Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners) - were asked to assume two still-up-in-the-air events: that the city will rezone the northern part of the neighborhood and that the Sanitation Department will not build a proposed facility.

After pointedly saying that it was easy for drivers to move their cars during the midweek snow-and-ice storm and that parking tickets would stand, Mayor Bloomberg backtracked and said tickets issued for alternate side of the street violations on Thursday and Friday would be forgiven (the message is also there on 311). The Mayor begrudgingly said he was sorry during his radio program yesterday:

I’m sorry for the inconvenience to people, but you know you have to make decisions, and each of these storms is different......In retrospect, in some parts of the city there was not that much snow, and in other parts it probably really was an imposition. We did get a lot of calls and listened very carefully to what the Sanitation Department heard, to what our Community Assistance Unit heard, took a look at what calls came into 311.

Today's City section that brings up another problem with the development boom that has covered our fair city the past few years: Where to put the local old folk. Specifically where to put their nursing homes.

Mother Nature, you did it! You made sure that there was enough snow to make meteorlogists - and local news crews - in the region thrilled beyond belief by dumping over 2 feet of snow in New York City - and more in outlying areas - which makes this a brand new record. Sure, Gothamist was laughing at newscasts touting the "Blizzard of 2006" as having the second highest snowfall, but when we took that crown from 1947 with 26.9", we did emit a bit of a holler. And then we ran outside and got nailed by some snowballs. Mayor Bloomberg called it a dangerous storm and even mentioned he too heard the early Sunday thunder, saying, "I thought, 'Plows don't make that noise.'" That other noise you heard, besides children's cheers of sledding, were children's tears over not having a snow day for Monday - school opens, kids! Anyway, who cares if two feet of snow doesn't technically count as being a blizzard?

Sondra, LES