Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management

Hello? Can I have a Zoom check? Hello, can I have a Zoom check? Just— This is Chief Sergeant Terrence Rafael Perez conducting an audio check for Zoom. Are you hearing us? Chief, he said 1 minute. Hey, Raquel, can you hear me? We can hear you. Okay, thank you. Sure. Loud and clear. Thank you.

And welcome back. Thank you for joining us through the Committee on Sanitation's cyberattack. There was so much highly sensitive information and snow materials being discussed that, you know, Los Angeles really came for us. They needed all of our snow knowledge. Having said that, I will now turn it over to Councilmember Sanchez-Woso for some questions.

Thank you, Chair. And before I start with questions, I just want to acknowledge the constituent who was killed in my district last week by a sanitation truck. And I know the incident is still under investigation, and we'll have lots of time to discuss, you know, what could have been done. But I appreciate so much the early outreach by you, Commissioner, and your commitment to, you know, finding out whatever we can do to prevent that from happening again.

So thank you so much. I want to ask primarily When it comes to snow clearing, we've established, I think, as a result of the last hearing, that the corner property is responsible for clearing a pedestrian ramp. Is that correct? Corner property is responsible for clearing the pedestrian— a path to and including a pedestrian ramp? That is largely correct, yes.

Okay. And I think at the last hearing we discussed— and I don't believe you had been appointed yet. And so my sort of pet peeve last year because of everyone pushing a stroller and having accessibility issues is that people were clearing the corner, a path to the corner, and clearing the ped ramp. But then sanitation was plowing snow such that it piled up right at the end of the crosswalk.

So there would be a mound of snow in between the crosswalk where people were crossing and then the properly cleared, hopefully, pedestrian ramp. Hopefully we don't get that level of snow again such that it has mounds sort of staying on the street. But at the time, the acting commissioner was looking into ways that we could sort of make sure that the entire crosswalk was cleared, particularly when the corner property is doing their piece in clearing the ped ramp.

Wondering if there's a strategy this year around that. Yeah, so to start, I think that's where having the emergency snow shoveler program be much more robust and also having more Snow blowers and other equipment to be able to respond to those areas more quickly will be really helpful. We've also done a lot of work in routing to those corners.

We're trying to avoid this distinction between it's a ped ramp versus it's a crosswalk versus— we're just treating everything on the corner that connects the sidewalk to the street as a corner. Great. And if we get there and it's not shoveled, we will shovel it. If we get there and it's shoveled, great, we'll move on. So the thing that we're, that we're doing differently from a routing perspective this year is we are trying to prioritize which corners we are doing first with our snow shovelers and our sanitation workers.

We have a couple different criteria that we're using to prioritize those. The first is any corner that is within 200 feet of a bus stop or a subway stop is getting prioritized. Mm-hmm. Any corner that is on— DOT has a sort of 5-tier ranking of crosswalks. Any corner that's in the top 3 tiers of those rankings, which is the areas that have the highest number of pedestrians, those are prioritized.

We're also looking at corners that have the accessible pedestrian indicators. So those are the audible indicators for the crosswalk. Those are all prioritized. In total, it comes out to around 20,000 corners, which we understand is still a very small share of all of the corners in New York City. I think there's never a world where we are going to get to everything as a number one priority.

So we have to do some prioritization based on where the most people are moving in in the days immediately after a storm. And one of the things that we are also doing is working with the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities and the Department for the Aging to make sure that we are also prioritizing areas where we know there are high populations of people with mobility challenges or who rely on mobility devices to get around so that we are also accounting for that.

If I may, I mean, it sounds like you've sort of worked out that priority structure, but schools were also what I heard the most of. And granted, I know it's mostly DOE's responsibility to clear outside of school sites, but making sure those corners are clear given the heavy pedestrian traffic, especially during, you know, dismissal and dropping— drop-off as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the New York City Public Schools custodial staff do tremendous work to get schools back open, often in the hours or less than a day after the snowfall ends. I think the thing that we try to work very close with them on is making sure that the routes to get to that school, either from the nearest public transit stop or from where parents or buses are dropping off, are also clear.

So it's not just the sidewalk immediately proximate to the school, but it's the larger area around the school, and that's something that we work very closely with Kevin Rand, who is their Chief Operating Officer, and his team on. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks, Chair.

I would like to recognize that we have been joined by Councilmember Vernikoff on Zoom. And I don't think I said Councilmember Ressler earlier, but I want to make sure. And now I will turn it over to Councilmember Wilson. Thank you, Chair. Hello, Commissioner. Thank you for your testimony.

Just to follow up about the pedestrian access Is— with this new robust team of shovelers, is there a certain standard that you expect to be able to have pedestrian side intersections and ped ramps cleared that perhaps you weren't able to have in the last time? And also, It— if— sorry, I lost my train of thought. When you— 311 says that I think you have to wait like 72 hours before reporting or accepting complaints about bus shelters being cleared.

Do you expect that to remain the same given the new robust workforce that you have doing some of the shoveling? So I will— I'll start by saying the robust workforce that we expect to have is one that we are still working to build. And so we need the help of not only every City Council member but every other elected official and community leader to help us get to the level of pre-registration for snow shovelers that we need in order to be able to mount a really robust response.

And, you know, we have more time. It's still 60 degrees out right now. It's only November 2nd, but snow will be here before we know it, and we need to continue working in that direction. As far as a specific expectation around when certain assets will be cleared, I think it's far too dependent on the characteristics of an individual snowstorm, the temperatures leading into it, the amount of snow that's already on the ground, and lots of other factors.

So I don't think we can commit to a specific response time for every single corner in the city or every single bus stop in the city, except that we, we will respond faster than we have in the past. And we are tracking it much better. So we know, as the Department of Sanitation, which assets have been cleared by our staff or by our snow shovelers and which have not.

And we'll be able to sort of move through the whole set of assets more strategically after the fact. What was the other question? Sorry. I think you answered it. It was just about like the time, response times, and what you expect for the This season.

So, ask about bike lanes for a second. So the DSNY 25-26 snow plan committed to treating bike lanes simultaneously with roadways, but I think there's some 311 guidance describes clearing bike lanes after streets and says that the clearance is not guaranteed. So could you clarify which policy we can expect? Yeah, so that 311 language is clearly out of date, and we We'll make sure that we go in and clean that up, because we have 47 plow units on hand that we deploy actually generally before the snow starts.

We have tried in the past brining bike lanes. We find that salting bike lanes works better. It also gives good traction for people who have to use bike lanes to get around even during the snowfall. So we have that equipment out and assigned to routes while it's snowing, after it's done snowing. There are situations where if a bike lane is blocked by a car, or if it's inaccessible for some reason, and gets really heavy accumulations, it can be very difficult and very slow work to shovel that out using either manual shovels or our skid steers or other small equipment.

And so one of the things that I personally, not in this role, but as a New Yorker, observed last year in the January storm was some protected bike lanes that were not able to be serviced during the storm were then, you know, unfortunately full of snow that turned into a block of ice, and there was really no digging them out.

So I think one of the things that we're trying to do this year is have better situational awareness about where our small plows are not able to get into the bike lanes during a storm and try to respond to that either by removing vehicles or towing Towing people out of there. And do you feel like you have enough equipment, of the appropriate-sized equipment, to be able to deal with them?

I think we do. Certainly something that we're looking at as DOT is working on their updated streets master plan, and they're planning around additional bike infrastructure, additional pedestrian infrastructure, is planning proactively so that we are buying new equipment in advance of them installing new capital assets instead of the other way around. For a long time, you know, we sort of played catch-up after DOT would build a thing.

We'd say we need resources to take care of that thing, and there's a, you know, 12-month gap between the thing existing and us having the resources to deal with it. So we're trying to get ahead of that, and hopefully in the context of the budget, that's something that we're able to talk more about next year.

And then I think over the winter months, we can begin to anticipate more Street bed dining structures emerging. How are you anticipating dealing with that new challenge in the street when it comes to snow removal? So it's a, it's a new challenge in that they are authorized for permanent year-round placement, but we did deal with 4 years of the temporary COVID pandemic program, and there were far more dining sheds out in the streets than there are today.

I think we have a good approach as far as making sure that our routes can accommodate them. We have a really good relationship with our sister agencies at FDNY and DOT as far as reviewing placement, making sure there's adequate room to get our vehicles through, and most importantly, adequate room for our vehicles to be able to turn, because a collection truck with a plow on it does have a wider turning radius than just a standard collection truck.

So we need to make sure that we can get our plows into blocks. that we can safely plow through the block, and I think we will be in a good place this year. Thank you, Chair. Next we will hear from Councilmember Chanel Thomas-Henry.

Thank you, Chair. My first question is as it relates to alleyways. Last season we saw an accumulation of trash behind homes in their alleyways because residents weren't aware that they needed to place them in front of their homes. These are residents who had lived there for decades. What triggers the moving the trash from behind your house in the alleyway to the front yard, and how will those residents be alerted?

So that's, that's something that I very much want to do differently this year. In the past, I think we've, we've relied too much on people just assuming the right thing to do, and this year I think we would like to be more more clear and more proactive about telling people alley service is suspended effective on X date and will not resume for at least Y number of days.

Okay. So, looking at the January storm, for example, from last year, we would say very proactively to people, alley service is suspended effective the day prior to the snowstorm happening, and then tell people it will not resume Last year, unfortunately, because these alleys are not serviced by us for snow removal purposes, they are private streets, many of them were impassable and it was unsafe for us to put equipment back there for over 2 weeks.

And I think we just need to be clear with folks that if you have private alley service, you need to move your trash to the front of your building. It may be 2, 3 weeks in a row, but at least then the trash isn't piled up in your alley. Thank you. And what way are you going to notify those residents?

How are you going to notify them? So we're going to be much more proactive on our social media. We're also in the process of planning— A mailer maybe? Like some of the residents I'm talking about are older adults. We can take a look at a mailer. I think that may be an effective tool, but I think we want to be able to provide more real-time information to folks also.

So we're looking at Text message, calling, emailing options to be able to say specifically to those alley service residents, put it out in the front or, you know, on a date certain, alley service will resume. Gotcha. And I name that because my 90-year-old grandmother is one of those and she can't check email and is not on social media.

Maybe the Facebook, but— Understood.

Along those same lines with just notification, a lot of homeowners and businesses also received fines last year because they weren't aware of exactly how much of their perimeter adjacent to their property they needed to shovel. Are you guys going to do the same kind of proactive campaign reinforcing to property owners and business owners what they're responsible for?

Yeah, absolutely. We do a lot of communication to folks on what their responsibilities are. I think that the responsibilities have not generally changed. If you own a property or are a commercial establishment, You are responsible for clearing your sidewalk, and that means clearing at least a 4-foot-wide path, clearing a path to the bus stop, clearing around fire hydrants, clearing the pedestrian ramp.

That all of that is part of the sidewalk, and you're responsible for doing so within a certain number of hours after the snow stops. We usually give people a good amount of leeway, but last year we did issue over 19,000 violations over the 2 storms. And I think that at the end of the day, we probably could have issued another 100,000 more if we had the resources to do so.

I want to clarify, just clarity on interagency responsibilities. I have quite a few schools that are adjacent to parks. In those instances, who is responsible for clearing access in and out of the school? So the school is responsible for clearing the sidewalk around the school itself. The Parks Department is responsible for clearing around the park. Our hope is that those 2 agencies are coordinating that together, and if either of them needs additional resources or help to make sure that we're ready to open up school, you know, in the morning, we're always happy to help where we can if we have additional resources available.

Gotcha.

And then in the plan, it mentions NYC services, capacity, resources. are given to local nonprofits and CBOs. What does that mean in terms of— Yeah, so New York City Service works with community-based organizations to develop community networks where if there's an older New Yorker or a person with disabilities who's unable to shovel their own sidewalk, those community organizations can try to connect them to volunteers from the community who are ready, willing, and able to do that work for them.

That said, every New Yorker who owns a property or a commercial establishment is responsible for their sidewalk, and it is critical for all New Yorkers' ability to move around following a snowstorm that they clear their sidewalk. And just because you're an older New Yorker and, you know, may not be physically able to does not alleviate that responsibility.

Is there a listing of the local nonprofits that you guys work with or that— Yeah, we can work with NYC Service to get that for you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

To follow up on that, in its draft snow plans, the department encourages neighbors to help each other remove snow when needed. However, we know this does not always happen in practice. Has the department considered developing its own program to assist seniors and disabled New Yorkers? Could emergency snow shovelers be deployed to prioritize accessible transportation routes? Would the department consider creating its own volunteer registry similar to the city's Adopt-a-Rain Garden program?

So our priority following a snowstorm is public assets, and we assign the resources that we have, both sanitation workers and our emergency snow shovelers, to clear those public assets first. If we get to a place where all of the public assets citywide have been cleared, then we can assign them to private assets. But, you know, I think that would be far too slow for those properties to be cleared, and so our expectation is that private property owners arrange for the clearance of their properties.

You know, that's an obligation that comes with owning property in New York City. And unfortunately, that's, you know, that's our expectation for folks. Thank you.

Okay. I will turn it over to Councilmember Hankerson.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for for hearing Intro 1042 today. I just want to say briefly, one thing that I'm big on is transparency, and I believe that the difference between making information publicly available and making it accessible is necessary and needed for New Yorkers.

But for my questioning, Commissioner, I know we have the emergency snow shovelers program, but are there times where you work with the Parks Department The Parks Department is responsible for clearing their assets, and we are responsible for clearing many of ours. Is it just parks that they clear, or are they responsible for other city property outside of the parks?

There have been times that Parks employees have also worked alongside Sanitation. They regularly assign plow operators to parks. to the Sanitation Department during snowstorms. And once the parks infrastructure was all cleared last year, I think they did expand to some other public assets. In those instances, who gives them directives? The parks— who gives the parks employees directives?

It's a combination of parks supervision and sanitation supervision. Who gives the emergency snow shovelers directives? Generally, Sanitation and DOT workers. Are they oftentimes— well, in those instances, are they assigned to do similar or the same work? They may. Many of the Parks employees are still assigned doing Parks work within their parks. Parks has, you know, probably thousands of miles of paths and sidewalks they're responsible for, so there's quite a good deal of work to do.

Are they paid at a comparable rate? You know, I'm not familiar with exactly the pay rate that most Parks employees work, but I know for our emergency snow shoveler program, we did increase the pay rate to $30 an hour, in part in recognition of the emergency nature of the work and the fact that we are asking people who aren't full-time employees of the City of New York to come in and do work for us.

If Parks workers are completing the same type of work as an emergency snow shoveler or a sanitation worker, do you think they should, they should be paid at a comparable rate? I can't speak to the, the nature of the compensation and benefits offered to Parks Department employees. They are full-time employees that have pensions and health insurance and other things.

So, you know, I don't know that it's necessarily apples to apples. This is— and this is, forgive my ignorance, but when a sanitation worker is assigned a certain route, let's just say it's off the snowplow, it's actually shoveling, could they be assigned, or could a parks worker be assigned with them on that route? Not generally side by side.

Our sanitation workers often are operating mechanical equipment. As I mentioned in testimony, we have 120 new snowplows. We have over 100 skid steers. We have the 47 bike lane plows. So generally, our sanitation workers, because they are professional drivers, will be assigned to operate equipment, where the emergency snow shovelers will do more of the manual work. I appreciate that.

And finally, just going back to the bill, during previous snowstorms, PlowNYC did not allow for— did not allow our office to easily review streets plowing history from the previous day. If DSNY maintains historical GPS records, why can't residents access that information directly through the public-facing website? So I think that's something that we are open to. It's just a question of the resources necessary to do that and to build it out in the manner that the bill sets forth.

So, you know, it's technologically feasible. It's just a question of putting the development resources and time into it. Great. Thank you. Yep.

Councilmember Bresso. Thanks so much, Chair Sanchez. I really appreciate it. And good to see you, Commissioner and team. It was great to have you in Brooklyn Heights last week, and we are really excited about commercial waste zones in CV-1. So there's great things happening with the Department of Sanitation across District 33. I'd like to follow up on one of the items that Councilmember Santos-Suazo was highlighting. which is just my concern around intersections.

And, you know, it's for sure for people with disabilities. I see the world anew as a young dad trying to get a stroller around. And the number of complaints I got this past year was the sanitation department did an amazing job clearing the streets and the intersections were totally impassable. So cars could get anywhere they needed to go, but people were utterly screwed.

And I just, you know, I appreciate a committed effort to having a workforce that's out there to clear intersections and crosswalks, and that we want property owners on the corners to do more, although I think that's unlikely to change much from what we saw this past winter. I was wondering if you're considering any new technology approaches. I'm sure you're always looking at what other cities in the Northeast are doing and how they clear snow.

Montreal clears sidewalks with motorized devices. Is that something that you think we should consider in New York City? So a lot of people make a comparison to Montreal. Montreal clears sidewalks in a very small portion of the city, and the level of service they provide is similar to what our business improvement districts are providing in commercial corridors all around the city.

The City of Montreal is not clearing a standard residential sidewalk in the sort of far reaches of the city. And I think that the resources that would be required for the city to provide that service to every single property, that's more than 800,000 properties citywide, would be enormous. So I think it is appropriate for that to be the responsibility of the private property owner.

And certainly we at the Department of Sanitation are stepping up our capacity to be able to clear The areas that are outside of that private property responsibility, the area from the corner into the crosswalk, the area around the bus stop, making sure that people can continue to keep moving around New York City however they move. But even still, in a best-case scenario, I don't know what your— when you were doing the tabletop exercise this weekend, how long in a best-case scenario would you— you said you would hope to do 20,000 intersections.

Did I hear that right? Correct. How long do you think it would take to do 20,000 intersections if you're fully staffed up and things go as well as possible? I think it depends on, it depends on the weather, to be honest. If, if we're operating in, you know, 40 degrees the day after a snowstorm, which oftentimes it is 40 degrees the day after a snowstorm, I think we could get to those 20,000 corners within a day or two.

I think if we're in another situation where there's prolonged extreme cold. You know, it may take us longer to get to those 20,000 intersections or 20,000 corners, but we would certainly, I think, one, have better situational awareness around what we've achieved and what we haven't, and two, be able to more clearly communicate that to the public.

Okay. I mean, I think we just, in last year's winter, in last year's storms, which were really bad, we saw intersections that were impassable for many days, and in, like, the heart of our commercial districts in Brooklyn. And so it was challenging for everybody to get around. And, you know, waiting days to be able to walk safely around the neighborhood is really tough.

And so, you know, I appreciate the focus on bringing on a greater workforce that can do this work quickly. I remain concerned that we're going to be in tough situations, as, you know, the nature of climate change is more extreme weather and more intense storms that are challenging for us to wrestle with. And I think we need to think about new approaches that can actually meet these new climate dynamics.

And so, you know, whether— you know, my mom is from Montreal. I'm half Canadian. I spend a lot of time up there. I think you're, you know, They do a really impressive job clearing a ton of snow all the time. And I do think there are more lessons for us to learn. Montreal is broken into different municipalities within the city, so it is a different structure.

But in the heart of Montreal, in their downtown area, they clear snow off sidewalks and make it passable in real time. So I just hope that we can do more, especially in our dense urban areas of the city.

I am— Also, just want to take this opportunity to ask you a little bit about one of my kind of chronic snow issues, which are the DOT bridges and the kind of underpasses. I represent the BQE through much of the northern half of Brooklyn, and it's critical for my constituents to be able to walk down the sidewalks on the BQE.

And it's often— nobody takes responsibility for it. Not sanitation, not DOT. I think it's supposed to be DOT's responsibility, but they never do anything. And so could sanitation take responsibility for clearing the snow off of all bridges? Is that— and the sidewalk areas that are on those bridges, is that something you all would consider? Or what other options do we have if DOT is going to continue to do nothing?

So I think DOT actually does a fair bit of work to try to clear overpasses. Not in my district. That said, there are a lot of overpasses all across the city. I can't speak to exactly how they prioritize that work, but certainly when they've come to us saying we need help on these locations, if we have the ability to provide that help, we do so.

There has not been a storm in the 5 years that I've been on the City Council where I haven't had to go out myself and shovel on those BQE bridges because DOT is nowhere to be found. And that's like— I'm happy to help in whatever way I can, but that's a pretty absurd process that I'm the one going out there with a shovel.

So I don't know how they're prioritizing it, but they're not doing anything in District 33, and I've asked 3 commissioners over 5 years and begged for help, and it never seems to come. So is there a different approach that we could take that would actually get better results? So I would say 2 things there. One, when we have more emergency snow shovelers and we have the additional mechanized equipment, we will be able to get to more places more quickly, and We're not necessarily saying, oh, we don't do that because that's DOT.

If a place needs to be shoveled, we will shovel it. It's just a question of how are we prioritizing the resources that we are allocating following a storm. As I've said, our priority following storms this upcoming winter is going to be bus stops and those 20,000 priority corners. I think we can talk about adding additional priorities. But once everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.

So, so no, I get it. We're going to focus on that. We are going to work with DOT to make sure that we have the right resources and equipment allocated to the assets that they also maintain. I'd be thrilled if they got their act together. It's just I've never seen it, and I've been in government a long time, and this is an issue that happens every single year.

I hear it from council members. I've heard it when I worked in the previous administrations. I heard it from council members all across the city. The DOT does a terrible job here. And I have never seen it improve. And if you go to like the heart of South Williamsburg on Lee Avenue, you cross the BQE overpass and it's just a pile of ice and snow that is totally blocked off and people can't walk from one commercial corridor to the next over the BQE because it's treacherous.

And DOT doesn't care or doesn't have the resources or isn't organized to do their job. Whatever the issue is, I don't know. But I just think at some point we should take this out of their responsibility and you all should just be responsible for it and it should be— Do you think that's a good idea? Department of Sanitation's job to do it, and we know it'll get done that way because right now it's just complaining year after year and nothing changing.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember. Um, what is— speaking of these conditions, what is the current condition and average age of the department's snow equipment, uh, fleet, including plows, salt spreaders, and front-end loaders? Absolutely. Um, so our, our plows are just our standard Collection trucks. And for our reloader collection trucks, our average age is 5.1 years. Our dual bins average age 5.7 years.

For our salt spreaders, those are a little bit older on average because they only work during the winter, so they have a longer life cycle. And we also upgrade them every year, so we do a total rebuild of all of the key components. Those, the average age right now is 7.5 years. What percentage of this equipment is beyond its recommended service life?

For collection trucks, it's a relatively small share. For salt spreaders, it's only 12% are over the 12-year service life. But because the average age is 7.5 years, it does indicate that they're sort of in a group getting older and older. You know, one of the things that we do every year is make sure that we are proactively ordering additional equipment.

We have many, many additional salt spreaders that we bring in every year. Last year, 48 salt spreaders. This year, another 20 on top of that have already come in. So we do what we can to try to stay on top of that. How many snow melters are currently operational versus planned? We have 26. You know, some of them are still in their winter upgrade cycle, so You know, we couldn't necessarily put all 26 of them out today, but we have some, some additional spares in that number.

So we don't have 26 approved locations where we could operate melters if we wanted to, because we have to work with DEP to make sure that the sewer has capacity to take the additional snowmelt. But for example, last year we operated 13 melters. We had 26.

So we What is the status of the department's requirement contracts for additional snow equipment, salt, brine, and calcium chloride? And has the department conducted outreach to additional vendors for snow emergency contracts? Are these vendors part of a prequalified list? Absolutely. So we have 2 different types of contracts that we can bring equipment in off of. We have a requirements contract where there's a standby fee and they basically agree upfront to deliver a certain amount of equipment with operators at any point during the season with 24 hours' notice.

We also have separate emergency contracts, which, because they're emergency contracts, they don't exist yet. But we do a lot of preparation around making sure we have a list of contractors who can provide equipment and operators. We know where they are. We know where we would assign them if we had to. And then we can really streamline that contracting process, along with the Comptroller's Office, when we get a declaration of emergency during the snowstorm.

After reviewing the Bronx snow plan, it seems that there are fewer personnel and equipment in the South Bronx, particularly compared to other areas of the borough. Specifically, Districts 1, 2, and 3 have fewer large spreaders, plowable trucks, and plow bids overall compared to the other districts. Can you explain the reason for this difference? So part of the reason is those are geographically some of the smallest districts in the Bronx.

So you look at some other districts like Bronx 12, for example, is geographically much larger. And so the amount of equipment that it takes in order to have a plow assigned to every single plow route in the district is much greater. Bronx Community District 2, for example, is geographically quite small. And the routes are— I'm trying to think about how to explain it, but they're sort of compact.

And so it's easy, it's much easier for equipment to sort of operate through the routes. It's a less hilly part of the Bronx than some of the other areas. So for all those reasons, there's less equipment assigned. That doesn't mean that the level of service is any less. And every sector in each of those districts will have a plow assigned.

Does the department log or track data regarding missed street cleaning routes during alternate side parking windows? Instances where a sweeper misses its window and cannot complete the route because the parked cars have returned. What is the standard operational protocol or recourse? So yes, absolutely we do. And a lot of that data is reported in our annual Sweep NYC report that we sent over to the council earlier this summer.

We also are routinely looking at 311 complaints for missed or inadequate sweeping. And what we find is that in many cases, it's actually not missed sweeping. It's the street sweeper was there but could not get to the curb because of parked cars blocking it from doing its job. And so that's why, as we've said repeatedly in the past, We are big fans of the concept of automated enforcement because right now we don't have the number of officers that we would need to be able to do enforcement on every single block of ASP every single day.

But with automated enforcement, we think compliance would improve pretty substantially. Thank you.

Councilmember Hanif. Thank you, Chairs, and thank you for joining us. I'm really grateful to hear some of my colleagues ask questions pertaining to New Yorkers with responsibilities during snowstorms. So New York City has the ultimate responsibility under the ADA and the New York City Human Rights Law to make sure pathways are fully accessible, including the removal of snow and ice from sidewalks and curb cuts.

Is the current practice of delegating the clearance of curb cuts and pathways to property owners meeting those responsibilities? I think that That yes, the— in large part, property owners are doing their job and clearing their sidewalks. There are cases where they are not, and we are doing enforcement to make sure that occurs. And for those property owners who are not, do you have maybe like a worst offenders list or keeping track in any sort of way as to which property owners might not be doing their share of the work?

Yeah, we certainly had properties that last year received repeated violations for failure to clear their sidewalk, whether that's failure to clear it at all or failure to maintain a clear sidewalk. And that's something that, you know, particularly last year, if we conducted enforcement in the same place multiple times in a row, there were some times where we just sent our staff out and cleared the sidewalk ourselves because we didn't want to wait any longer.

And what's the largest I believe it's $250. That's it? Yes. That's the highest a property owner is paying if they haven't shoveled their sidewalk? So we can, under the administrative code, we can charge for the cost of snow removal. So if we use our employees to actually shovel the sidewalk, we can charge for that. It does require us to document what those costs are and sort of come up with a billing procedure.

And administratively, that's more effort than just shovel it and move on. So I don't think we've done that in many cases in the past, but it's something that we could look at in the future. So the first violation is how much? The first violation is $100. The range of penalties for failure to clear sidewalk is $100 to $250.

Okay, and then what support for property owners does the city currently offer for those property owners who are disabled, elderly, to help them clear their sidewalks? So the responsibility for clearing the sidewalk is theirs and theirs alone. If you own property in New York City, you have to keep your sidewalk clean. You have to keep your sidewalk clear of snow and ice and winter.

That's a basic premise of owning property in a city like New York City. New York City Service does provide tools for community-based organizations who want to try to connect volunteers to those who may need help, but at the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the property owners to clear their own sidewalk. Do property owners know that they have this resource available?

I'm speaking particularly about disabled homeowners and elderly homeowners. A lot of these networks are very, very localized. And so it's an existing senior center that works with local volunteers who may already volunteer with that senior center and want to provide help during the winter. So it's a hyper-localized practice, but again, The city is not offering a service to people who own property.

If you own a property, you have certain responsibilities to maintain that property. Those responsibilities include clearing snow and ice in the winter. Got it. So essentially the city doesn't provide any additional services. This is all— you're talking about grassroots level kind of mobilizing that's happening, that could potentially be happening because some neighborhoods don't have those resources. And currently, what meetings or coordination is happening between the disabled community, City Hall, and the council to make sure that we've got a more inclusive and equitable plan for the next storms?

And is there a plan in place right now that is specifically about ensuring that disabled New Yorkers are able to get around during snowstorms? So as I, as I mentioned before, one of the things that we are doing differently this year is, is trying to prioritize which corners we are assigning our assets to, looking at bus routes, other transit stops.

Your assets to is— you're talking about like trucks and workers? Snow shovelers, sanitation workers, snow blowers, skid steers, plows, the whole range of, of things that we have available to help fight snowstorms. And, you know, we're looking at a whole range of things. I also mentioned before that we are having conversations with DFTA and the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities to make sure that we are prioritizing corners in areas that would be of particular importance to those communities that those agencies serve.

You know, at the end of the day, we can't prioritize everything, so prioritization has to mean something. What do you mean by that? You can't prioritize everything? What do you mean? If everything is the same priority, then nothing is prioritized. So at the end of the day, we need to, we need to know which places to assign our assets first and then work through, work through everything in order.

You know, what, what we've said before is our priority for our resources this year is the 20,000 priority corners and all of the unsheltered bus stops across New York City. If we can get through all of those locations, we will absolutely keep shoveling until there's nothing left to be shoveled or until Mother Nature gets there first and melts it for us.

So that's our approach. Is the department meeting with disabled New Yorkers or leaders? I mean, there are either task forces or existing meetings happening maybe through MOPD, but it would be really, I think, beneficial for the department to have to be in a space to hear directly from disabled leaders, advocates on the issue of storms and addressing the priority concerns?

Yeah, that's something that we've had a number of conversations with MOPD about and would be happy to have more. Got it. Currently there isn't a maybe something calendared that would be a roundtable conversation between MOPD, the Sanitation Department, and Disability advocates? There's nothing immediately on the schedule, but we'd be happy to set something like that up. Excellent.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. And with that, thank you for your testimony, and we will be taking a 10-minute recess.

Welcome back, everyone. I now open the hearing for public testimony. I remind members of the public that this is a government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public Shall remain silent at all times. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify. No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table.

Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the Sergeant at Arms for inclusion in the hearing record. If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the Sergeant at Arms and wait to be recognized. When recognized, you will have 2 minutes to speak on today's hearing topics.

DSNY snow preparedness, or any of the legislation on our agenda today. If you have a written statement or additional written testimony you may— you may— you wish to submit for the record, please provide a copy of that testimony to the Sergeant at Arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing. Audio and video recordings will not be accepted.

I will now call our first panel. We have Elizabeth Valdez and Evan— oh, Iman Remaui-Poster. Thank you so much. You may begin.

All right. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Good morning— oh, afternoon. My name is Iman Ramawi-Doster, and I'm a senior community organizer for the Disability Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. NYLP's Disability Justice Program works on, among other issues, reducing barriers for people with disabilities around New York City, including by supporting those seeking better access to sidewalks, curb cuts, transportation, and businesses.

Last winter's snow and ice was especially brutal for those of us with physical disabilities and chronic illness. As an above and below knee amputee with lupus, which causes chronic pain and chronic fatigue. Navigating the city is already difficult. Adding snow and ice makes it even harder. My husband, who doesn't have a physical disability, had to travel with me for 3 days after the first few snowstorms because we knew that my metal legs and walker and wheelchair were no match for the ice and the snow, and I couldn't even leave the house on the second day of the storm.

How can the city talk about how much it wants disabled New Yorkers to work but not make sure the Getting to work isn't just about transportation or workplace accommodations. It's about making sure the streets, sidewalks, and curb cuts are clear for us in every borough. In addition, there are many other things we're missing out on besides work, like school, doctor's appointments, cultural events, dinner with friends, and so much more.

These issues are not minor inconveniences. I agree. They're actually immediate threats to public safety and a violation of disabled New Yorkers' rights to access streets and sidewalks. We need a holistic, intersectional, proactive, and intentional approach, including implementing of the following: assisting seniors and persons with disabilities with snow removal, help incentivize property owners who are unable to meet their snow obligations, assess fines for noncompliant property owners and business businesses, evaluate whether current— and I'll submit the rest of it.

You can finish your testimony. Oh, sure. Okay. Consider increasing fines for businesses, especially chain businesses, with progressive fines for repeat offenders, such as proposed in 0020-2002. Eliminate fines for seniors and persons with disabilities who fail to comply with snow removal mandates. Prioritize areas for particular importance, like areas around curb cuts and crosswalks, as well as areas with less likely to be cleared, such as sidewalks and vacant lots.

Hire temporary workers to clear crosswalks. Establish a youth program, such as the Summer Youth Employment, to engage with citywide snow removal. Reimburse property owners. Institute uniform guidance and consider expanding the standards for Clear Paths. And of course, accountability. Improve interagency communication among relevant agencies and incentivize them to work more cooperatively. For example, if there's a park across the street from a public school, one agency could clear both.

Rate how individual DSNY districts are doing by utilizing daily surveys. And communication. Establish a DSNY alert system system for building superintendents. And learning from other cities, fines can be assessed on a per-daily basis rather than per violation. Chicago, for example, fines noncompliant businesses up to $1,000 per day for the violation. Thank you so much, and I'll submit my testimony.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth Valdez, and I am the systems advocate at the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the disabled and a wheelchair user. Earlier this year, people with disabilities across this city experienced a devastating and lengthy barrier to access from the snowstorms that occurred in January and February. We were trapped. The sidewalks, streets, crosswalks, curb cuts, and bus stops were completely impassable for many of us.

We have a right to be part of our communities, a right to have jobs, a right to travel freely, a right to be part of the life of this city. All of those rights were taken away by the city's failed response to these snowstorms. This committee must confront how the city's current snow clearing plans do not work for everyone.

Cleared streets, sidewalks, and crossings that are passable by able-bodied people were not passable by people with disabilities and older adults. In some cases, the city's efforts to clear streets for cars pushed snow and ice into the crosswalks and curb cuts, making it more difficult for people with disabilities to leave their homes. We support the idea of Intro 1042 before you today, but it must be amended to track barriers that impact people with disabilities.

The city must track and resolve blocked curb cuts, sidewalks, crosswalks, and other areas of passage for people with disabilities. The city must also coordinate snow clearance among agencies, including at the MTA, and provide a way for people with disabilities stuck by the snow to easily get help. Finally, we urge this committee to acknowledge the city's ultimate responsibility for the clearance of sidewalks and curb cuts.

We know, and the city knows, that property owners are not meeting their responsibility to keep sidewalks and curb cuts clear. The city must step in to meet its legal obligations and clear these barriers for people with disabilities. Thank you both for your testimony today.

We will now turn to remote testimony. Once your name is called, a member of our staff will unmute you and the sergeant-at-arms will give you the go-ahead to begin. Please wait for the sergeant to announce that you may begin before delivering your testimony. Now call on Mary Arnold. Good evening, You may begin. Thank you. Garbage in snow piles is a concern, but DSNY is also failing to keep garbage out of neighborhoods in other seasons. 85% of the city's MSW is exported to landfills and incinerators by rail.

Harms include the nauseating stench from punctured and otherwise defective cans that are not leak-proof, don't seal, and sit around in neighborhoods. The rats that move through neighborhoods attracted by Waste Management's stinking rail cans. Residents' loss of use and enjoyment of their property. Lack of achievement of DSNY's purported goals in the draft solid waste management plan for an increase in diversion.

The fact is that these rates are going down 40% of waste exported is rotting organics, and DSNY's planned Empire bins and automated pickup will simply mask this failure, which fuels climate change and spreads environmental injustice and pollution. The rapidly rising MSW export costs to New York City taxpayers, which add to the current affordability crisis New Yorkers. Lack of sealed leak-proof MSW containment is a violation of New York's consolidated laws, Environmental Conservation Law 27-0712.

The idea that DSNY's current waste-by-rail equipment, operations, and enforcement are adequate to maintain sealed leak-proof containment is patently false. Reports of stinking trains started in April of this year When it was 50 degrees outside and continue. DSNY told you at a hearing, Chair Sanchez, that waste export by rail costs this much because DSNY does it right. They do not.

What is DSNY going to do now to achieve compliance with state law and their own contract requirements? Stop letting companies they do business with externalize their cost at residents' expense. And protect community and environmental health. Thank you. I know you know from personal experience what a terrible thing this is. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Mary.

And if we have inadvertently missed anyone that has registered to testify and has yet to be called, please use the Zoom raise hand function if you're testifying remotely And you will be called on in the order that your hand has been raised. If you are testifying in person, please come to the dais. Going once. Going twice. Wow.

Riveting. Riveting stuff. Seeing none, I will now close the hearing. Thank you to the members of the administration and the members of the public who have joined us today to discuss this very important topic. This hearing is adjourned.