Wdhvn. Group Cited While Office Was Closed
The Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association (WRBA) is protesting summonses it recently received from the Sanitation Department for having recyclable refuse dumped in front of its Jamaica Avenue office-but according to the group’s president, the tickets came while no one was awake to notice.
Ed Wendell, WRBA president, told the Times Newsweekly that the ticket was issued by a Sanitation Department enforcement officer at 2:45 a.m. on Jan. 8, while the office was closed and well before it was scheduled to open.
The WRBA previously received a summons for a similar offense last year and successfully fought it at the Environmental Control Board (ECB). However, they lost the second round after the ECB declared it lacked the evidence to dismiss the violation.
“You don’t even have a chance to see the garbage,” Wendell told residents during the WRBA meeting last Saturday, Apr. 20, at Emanuel Church of Christ. “They tell you to prove it, but they’ve already taken away the evidence.”
Since the ECB’s decision, Wendell told this paper, the civic group received two additional summonses from the Sanitation Department for the illegal dumping of recyclable materials in front of their office. As with the previous tickets, he noted, they were issued during early morning hours while the office was closed.
A Sanitation Department spokesperson, in an email sent to the Times Newsweekly on Wednesday, Apr. 24, stated that “the summonses were given to the owner of the property for recyclables placed with nonrecyclables for collection and improper or misuse of a recycling curbside container.”
“The recycling was placed out for collection aparently by tenants of the building,” the spokesperson wrote. “The officers issued the summonses as dictated by the law,” adding that the tickets can be issued for such violations “at any time.”
“In this case, the recycling summonses were issued during night plow, which is a preparedness ready application used during the department’s snow season,” the spokesperson added.
The civic group subsequently reached out to two elected officials- Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and City Council Member Eric Ulrich- seeking assistance in having the summons dismissed.
The public advocate subsequently sent a letter to Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty on Apr. 10 which noted that, “according to the property owner … the improperly disposed of garbage did not emanate from the property that received the ticket, but rather was improperly placed there by someone passing by.”
“While I understand that it is necessary to hold property owners responsible for the garbage in front of their buildings, it is unreasonable to expect that property owners can act to ensure that all garbage in front of their home is disposed of in the middle of the night,” de Blasio wrote to Doherty. “While the practice of fining a property owner for something disposed of improperly at 2:45 in the morning will generate additional revenue for the city through the fines collected because of these violations, it will not change the behavior of the owner.”
Ulrich also broached the matter during his appearance at last Saturday’s WRBA meeting.
“When the city finds loopholes to nickel and dime us, we need to close them,” he stated, vowing to the audience that the City Council identified a loophole in Sanitation regulations which allows enforcement agents to issue summonses to businesses at anytime, day or night.
According to Ulrich, the Sanitation Department has a two-hour window of time every day to issue summonses to homeowners and businesses for having litter on sidewalks. While the agency must provide public notice of when they make enforcement efforts targeting homes, he stated, it is not required to provide the same notice when it examines area businesses for having improperly discarded recyclable material.
“Small business owners can’t be held responsible for maintaining the front of their properties in the middle of the night” if they are closed, Ulrich said. He described the overnight summonses as “very duplicitous.”
After speaking with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn about the issue, Ulrich added, the City Council “identified the loophole and we will close it” with appropriate legislation.
Constantly fighting the tickets is proving both time-consuming and costly to the WRBA, Wendell said in a phone interview with the Times Newsweekly on Wednesday. Attending an ECB hearing to protest the summons requires him to take time off of work and spend money on traveling to and from the ECB offices in lower Manhattan.
The WRBA has paid the $25 summons after being found guilty, but Wendell noted that it’s an expense which the civic group cannot afford to maintain if it keeps receiving summonses regularly.
“We’re certainly not against keeping the streets clean, but none of the Sanitation Department’s policies seem to do that,” he added. “They’re issuing tickets in such a way that the property owner is always responsible. I kind of understand that approach … but don’t take advantage of that rule by giving out tickets at two in the morning. At least give the property owner a chance to clean it up.”
