Facing backlash over trash piling up in city parks and streets, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a restoration of some litter basket pick-ups focused on neighborhoods hard hit by the COVID-19 health emergency, City Hall announced this week.
After cutting the Department of Sanitation budget by $106 million this summer, including about $3.9 million in Sunday litter basket service, the mayor will restore about 65 litter basket runs each week. That's a 24 percent increase from the previously slashed levels, the mayor said.
Weekly litter basket runs were cut on June 30th by 63 percent—from 736 to 272—the department confirmed.
"We have more work to do to keep working on the quality of life in our city," de Blasio said during a press conference on Wednesday. "And we know with a tight budget that it's been tough in terms of what we see in some our streets, and we want to improve some of the cleanliness levels."
The Department of Sanitation said the restoration is not expected to be more than $4 million, possible through a "slight reallocation" of department funds, but declined to specify what other programs would be impacted.
The litter basket service will target more than two dozen neighborhoods heavily impacted by coronavirus—including Corona, East New York, and East Harlem.
Additionally, the Economic Development Corporation will work with the Doe Fund to restart CleaNYC—a sidewalk cleaning program that was previously suspended under the budget cuts. De Blasio is also looking to volunteers and employees from local organizations to sponsor clean-up days.
Sanitation spokesperson Joshua Goodman said the restoration would "go a long way" but said NYers need to be "partners" and throw away litter properly.
"Remember, corner baskets are for small items like coffee cups or candy wrappers, and putting household or business trash in them is illegal," Goodman said.
The announcement comes days after a coalition of business leaders wrote a letter to the mayor demanding he take "immediate action" to address "widespread anxiety over public safety, cleanliness and other quality of life issues that are contributing to deteriorating conditions in commercial districts and neighborhoods across the five boroughs." Notably, the CEO of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, who organized that letter, does not support raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy in NY to fund such government programs.
De Blasio's sanitation commissioner (and lead czar and food czar and previously the interim head of NYCHA), Kathryn Garcia, resigned last week to run for mayor next year after de Blasio is term-limited out of the office. On her way out, she criticized the mayor's climate record for cutting composting programs—which she called "key to battling climate change."
New Yorkers have lamented worsening mountains of trash in parks and on street corners:
When COVID-19 ravaged NYC and shutdown much of the economy, the city lost $9 billion in revenue. Now, 22,000 city workers could face lay-offs.
The mayor's staffers and de Blasio himself will take a week-long furlough in the coming months, de Blasio announced Wednesday.
"We have so much to do and yet we are also facing an unprecedented budget challenge—literally unprecedented," de Blasio said Wednesday.
The mayor expressed shock at how the federal government has still not passed another substantial coronavirus relief package after the CARES Act, criticized at the time for not allocating enough money to city and state governments. Congress has failed to pass another relief package over disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on how much the legislation should cost.
"I have to tell you, here we are in the middle of September, I couldn't have imagined no action by Washington D.C. up to this point. I could not have imagined, honestly," de Blasio said Wednesday. "You go back to May, June, July—I thought it was an article of faith that there would be a federal stimulus. There hasn't been, and I see no indication that there will be through the remainder of this year."
He's still pushing for Albany lawmakers to authorize longterm borrowing to keep the city afloat—balancing the budget and preventing layoffs—though the Citizens Budget Commission has said borrowing should be a "last resort" option under "strict conditions."
