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'Trash-Strewn' Stretches of West End Ave. and Broadway to Get Extra Cleanup

By Emily Frost | September 18, 2014 3:49pm | Updated on September 19, 2014 4:50pm
 The DOE Fund will send workers, who are formerly homeless and incarcerated men, to pick up and bag trash on the Upper West Side as part of a City Council initiative to keep the city streets cleaner. 
Trash on West End Avenue and Broadway
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UPPER WEST SIDE — A section of West End Avenue and a busy stretch of Broadway that residents and elected officials say are regularly covered with loose garbage and overflowing trash bins will soon benefit from additional cleanup.

Two 10-block stretches of the streets have been pinpointed as problem areas, with visible trash seen spilling out of garbage cans and refuse littering the ground on West End Avenue between 86th and 96th streets and on Broadway between 76th and 86th streets.

To combat the problem, more than $70,000 in City Council funding earmarked specifically for sanitation services will be allocated to pay workers from The DOE Fund to do trash pickups along the streets each week. 

Workers will come seven days a week to clean up West End Avenue and three days a week to clean up Broadway. The services will begin Oct. 1 and are paid for through June 30. 

A steady stream of callers complaining about loose litter and overflowing trash, as well as Council staff doing their own investigations of the blocks, led Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal to direct the DOE Fund to those 10-block routes, said Marisa Maack, Rosenthal's chief of staff.

Those specific stretches are where "we saw the most strewn garbage on the street," Maack explained. 

The Department of Sanitation also confirmed that there were trash issues on those blocks. 

"The department responded positively to several 311 complaints during the months of June, July, and August of 2014 for missing and overflowing DS Baskets complaints, and will continue to monitor these areas for proper compliance with the use of litter baskets," Department of Sanitation spokesman Keith Mellis said in an email. 

The department empties the baskets at least three times a week, Mellis noted, though he could not immediately confirm the exact number of removals.

Local residents said the current pickups are not enough. 

"Each morning there is a steady train of people going to work, taking the kids to school, that bring up their household trash and put it in the cans at the corners on West End Avenue," said longtime resident Robert Josman, who said he regularly sees overflowing bins on the avenue in the West 90s while walking his dog.

Others noted that an increase in neighborhood density and steady foot traffic from non-residents contributed to the problem.

"There's a lot of workers and dog walkers. Sometimes I get the impression that the cans are not being cleared fast enough," said West 90s resident Aaron Biller.

Funding for the additional cleanup comes from a City Council initiative passed this spring earmarking $68,000 for each district to use on increased Department of Sanitation services or to bring in an outside group to improve street cleanliness.

The chance to meet two goals with one program — workforce development and cleaner streets and sidewalks — appealed to Rosenthal when she was deciding how to use the funds, she said. An additional $5,000 from Rosenthal's discretionary budget will also go toward paying The DOE Fund workers, she said. 

This year, with 27 City Councilmembers choosing to use their $68,000 to employ the DOE Fund, the program has greatly expanded, said Alexander Horwitz, director of external affairs for the group. 

The organization, which employs formerly incarcerated and homeless men, is sending a team to The Bronx for the first time and has expanded in every borough except Staten Island, he added.