By: Ilana Siyance
A recent Audit has found what most of us already know– New York City streets are filthy.
As reported by the NY Post, auditors from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office inspected a sample of 271 “blockfaces” or one side of a city block corner, including the street and sidewalk.
“We determined 189 streets and 159 sidewalks were dirty based on [the Department of Sanitation’s] Operations Scorecard criteria,” revealed the audit which covers fiscal year 2015 to 2019. The filthy findings apply to roughly two-thirds of the streets appraised and most of the sidewalks in all five boroughs of NYC.
In Manhattan, of 50 blocks sampled, 34 had dirty streets and 27 dirty sidewalks. In Brooklyn, 62 blocks were inspected, in which 44 had dirty streets and 39 dirty sidewalks. In Queens, 61 blocks were checked, finding 47 dirty streets and 40 unclean sidewalks. In the Bronx and Staten Island, 50 and 53 blocks were inspected, finding 34 unclean streets and 28 dirty sidewalks in each.
The study is more alarming, being that the reports were based on findings before the COVID-19 emergency started in March. Since then, Mayor Bill de Blasio has cut over $21 million in funding for litter basket pickup from the Sanitation Department’s budget amid the troubled finances led by the lockdown, reducing service to only three days a week, down from seven. The current filth is expected to be quite higher than in the report. Since then, rat sightings have jumped to more than 1,600 in June, up from under 1,000 in April.
Kathryn Garcia, who was sanitation commissioner at the time of the audit, was faulted for her Sanitation Department’s oversight of street cleaning. “Weaknesses in key managerial controls, including communication, coordination of efforts, and record keeping impede DSNY’s ability to effectively and efficiently address ongoing cleanliness problems on NYC streets and sidewalks,” the audit said. Garcia, who has since stepped down from the post and is hoping to run for Mayor next year, had gripes with the audit’s findings. “But at the time this audit was conducted, New York City was cleaner than ever before. This was true despite record high population, employment, tourism and economic activity,” Garcia said in a response letter to DiNapoli.
She said the agency can’t be blamed for unclean sidewalks, as that is the responsibility of property owners. “While the cleaning of streets is a clear duty of the Department of Sanitation … responsibility for cleaning sidewalks falls on the owners of the property adjacent to such sidewalks,” Garcia said.
