City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Saturday told the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association that he would work with area elected officials in addressing the issue of overnight Sanitation fines.
Photo Courtesy of Elaine Fan/Comptroller Stringer’s Office
The city comptroller last Saturday briefly addressed the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association meeting, vowing to support the civic organization in its quest to have the city Sanitation Department review its overnight ticketing policy, which has directly affected the WRBA on many occasions.
“We are going to intervene on behalf of the Residents’ Association,” Comptroller Scott Stringer said, adding that his office will collaborate with area elected officials on the matter. “We will contact the Sanitation Department and we will take a look at it.”
Last week, the WRBA sent a message to Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia asking her to put an end to the “unfair practice of issuing tickets to property owners in the middle of the night for garbage dumped outside their properties.”
According to the civic, in a statement issued last Monday, it is a common nighttime occurrence for people to dump trash outside Jamaica Avenue storefronts. Then, DSNY agents write summonses in the middle of the night, fining the victimized property owners, including the WRBA, for failing to dispose of garbage that they had actually never seen. These owners, the civic said, are getting fined for dumping “they could not possibly have prevented or corrected.” Additionally, the civic detailed how the agents many times take the trash with them when they write the ticket, without providing any photographs to the fined party.
After promising to investigate the issue, a Sanitation Department spokesman indicated late last week that one of the two recent Notices of Violation against the WRBA had been withdrawn. In a letter to the civic, Christopher Klingler, DSNY director of enforcement, also explained that the NOVs “may be issued at any time of the day or evening…” and that since NOVs issued in the early morning hours cannot be personally served, “an officer comes back during the day and attempts to personally serve” the NOV.
Alex Blenkinsopp, WRBA director of communications, said that while “it is encouraging that [Sanitation officials] took the time to reply to us and dismiss the ticket, we thought that it would have been extremely easy for them to say ‘Let’s just end this policy now.”
Blenkinsopp went on to say that the ticketing issue “is not about us,” but about the protocol.
“The entire policy has to change,” he said. “And we’re not going to rest until it does.”
By Michael V. Cusenza
