The downfall of a great city doesn’t begin with bad politicians, terrible laws or overspending. It actually starts on the streets where we live, work and shop.
The NYPD believes in something called the “broken windows theory.” This is the belief that a shattered window left in its broken state gives the appearance that a given area is being neglected.
Once that begins to happen, other problems start to creep into a neighborhood, such as illegal dumping, graffiti vandalism, drug use and serious crime. It doesn’t happen overnight-it may take months or years to foment-but before very long, a great neighborhood can truly decay into something awful.
So it bothers us that a bunch of slobs continue to use Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood as their personal landfill-and it takes too long for it to be cleaned.
Late last year, the Sanitation Department decided to take away public litter baskets from certain corners on Fresh Pond Road as an experiment because, they stated, the cans were abused by residents and business owners. The belief was that the dumping would stop if there was nowhere for the illegal dumpers to place their garbage.
As we enter the new year, it’s abundantly clear that the experiment isn’t working. People continue to dump whole bags of household waste on the corners regardless of whether there is a basket. The mess they leave behind remains there for hours, even days, as a magnet to critters and an eyesore to anyone who visits, shops, works or lives in Ridgewood.
When the baskets were there, the trash was at least somewhat contained-though the cans tended to be overflowing as a result of reduced collections.
Fresh Pond Road is not the only shopping strip experiencing an illegal dumping problem, but failed basket removal experiments aside, the city-and residents themselves-aren’t doing enough to stop this neglect from taking place.
The Sanitation Department has been urged by civic groups and this paper to beef up its enforcement efforts, but the agency has maintained it lacks the resources to do so. Even so, why has that become necessary? Why are so many of our neighbors ignorant of the law and their civic responsibility?
Illegally dumped trash on a street corner is like that unattended broken window, that graffiti-riddled security fence or that boarded-up house with mile-high weeds on the front lawn. It’s a symbol to every visitor that nobody in the neighborhood cares enough about it to keep up appearances.
Enough of these problems will eventually cause visitors to stop coming to a community, businesses to close down, residents to sell their homes and property values to plunge. It’s a slow, painful death of a neighborhood that can be-and should be-easily avoided.
The city can’t always be relied upon to resolve these problems on its own. It’s up to us to take meaningful action. Call 311 to report illegal dumping. Politely remind your neighbors about how trash should be disposed. Attend a local civic meeting and participate in organized cleanups.
Neglect can only kill a city if its people are neglectful.
