Readers Write: DSNY Clogging our Streets Again

Dear editor. 

Our community greatly appreciate the work of our dedicated sanitation workers. They toil in the cold and the heat, in the rain and the sleet, to ensure that our trash is picked up and that our streets are clean. 

However, I am old enough to recall when, in the year 2016, then-mayor Bill De Blasio promised New Yorkers that the sanitation trucks will be changing the schedule of their pickup times to times other than the morning school bus routes. 

This promise was greeted with euphoria in our community which has an inordinate amount of school buses running through the streets, shuttling boys and girls to their separate yeshivos and schools throughout the Boro Park community. 

For a few years, the promise was kept, and people were able to go about their morning commute on pickup days undisturbed. 

But I have noticed, and checked this with other people, that the sanitation department has fallen back on collecting the trash during the morning commute hours—clogging many streets, and bringing traffic to a standstill along many streets. This happened especially now following the Holidays with no pickup, creating a backup in the collections.

Again, I understand that their work is challenging, and again, it is deeply appreciated. But they are here to help us, not make things worse for all the drivers and schoolchildren in the community. 

I hope that someone from the city will be reading this, and understand the plight that that this pickup schedule brings our community. The DSNY—whose work we appreciate tremendously—has all the early-morning hours, as well as the mid-morning hours, to collect the trash. 

Please can they do it during those times?  

Sincerely, Abraham K., Boro Park