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De Blasio Vows to Clean Up New York's Filthy Streets

By Jeff Mays | February 3, 2016 2:46pm
 After a foray into national politics, Mayor Bill de Blasio is heading back to the nuts and bolts of being a big city mayor, announcing a plan to empty litter baskets more frequently, scrub sidewalks and paint over more graffiti than ever before.
After a foray into national politics, Mayor Bill de Blasio is heading back to the nuts and bolts of being a big city mayor, announcing a plan to empty litter baskets more frequently, scrub sidewalks and paint over more graffiti than ever before.
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Rob Bennett/Mayoral Photography Office

NEW YORK CITY — Litter baskets will be emptied, sidewalks will be scrubbed and graffiti will be painted over more quickly under Mayor Bill de Blasio's new plan to clean up New York City.

CleanNYC is a "set of targeted efforts to make all five boroughs cleaner and more livable," the mayor said Wednesday during an announcement at a Department of Sanitation garage on Spring Street.

The announcement comes a day after de Blasio returned from Iowa where he knocked on doors for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"This is so important for the lives of everyday New Yorkers for whom their neighborhood is the center of their life," de Blasio said. "It's so important for our small businesses, it's important of our economy. And the people of this city deserve nothing less than the cleanest city we can make it."

Under the plan, announced a day ahead of the mayor's State of the City address, the Department of Sanitation will increase litter basket pickups on Sundays and holidays by 40 percent in heavily trafficked areas starting April 1 by adding 20 more trucks.

That means 5,000 more litter baskets will be emptied on Sundays and holidays, bringing the total to 17,000 litter baskets that are serviced.

"It's one of the things people care about the most," de Blasio said reflecting on his time as a Brooklyn councilman. "They want their streets to be clean. They hate when they see litter on the street. They hate when they see those baskets overflowing."

The city will also sweep an additional 100 miles of highway ramps per week on roadways such as the FDR Drive, Cross Bronx Expressway, Major Deegan Expressway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Belt Parkway, among others.

Seven teams will be out on the weekends because "people are less appreciative when we block traffic on their way to work," said Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

The plan also doubles the capacity of Graffiti-Free NYC so that 40 million square feet of space per year is cleaned.

At the same time, the city will use the trucks that remove graffiti to powerwash sidewalks in the city's "heavily trafficked" commercial corridors such as Hylan Boulevard on Staten Island, Church Avenue in Brooklyn, the downtown Flushing transit hub in Queens, Jerome Avenue in The Bronx and Broadway on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

"The point is to go to areas that get a lot of foot traffic that people spend a lot of their lives walking along that need to look cleaner. We're going to literally powerwash those sidewalks," de Blasio.

The shift toward more nuts and bolts issues at the start of the second half of his term comes after criticism that de Blasio traveled too much outside of the city and was too focused on more abstract issues such as income inequality.

The mayor also announced a plan Wednesday to allow motorists to pay for parking via cell phone at all 85,000 metered city parking spaces by the end of 2016.

Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College, said she is not surprised to see de Blasio shifting a bit.

"It is a smart political move on his part and speaks to the fact that he knows he has a re-election campaign coming up," Zaino said. "He has given people the impression that he spends a lot of time outside of New York City and that he's focused more on progressive issues than New York City. Once you cement those impressions they are hard to change."

The mayor has argued that time spent outside the city and working on issues such as federal transportation funding, income inequality, and even campaigning for Clinton, will benefit the city in the long-run in policies that are favorable to residents.

Issues such as the cleanliness of city streets can have a bigger impact on voters than income inequality, Zaino said.

"The advice to public officials is you have to do the job you are elected to do," Zaino said. "Having a large world vision is great but you have to implement the day to day things that need to be done. You need to manage the city."