West Village Candidate Wants To Create Sanitation 'Strike Teams'

WEST VILLAGE, NY — Erik Bottcher, a candidate for City Council in the West Village's District 3, recently released a plan to address ongoing sanitation issues in the neighborhood.

Bottcher's ideas to help improve the issue that has plagued Lower Manhattan for decades include some seriously innovative ideas.

Including, the creation of emergency teams of sanitation workers to respond to 311 trash complaints in real-time, moving trash pick-up areas to the street instead of sidewalks, and using automated disposal bins that shoot waste through underground tubes to a centralized collection station.

"Picking up the trash and keeping our neighborhoods clean is one of the fundamental responsibilities of city government," said Botcher in a news release. "If New York City is going to recover economically from the crisis, we need to put our best foot forward to the world, and that includes having clean streets."

Bottcher is not new to politics in the West Village area. He has served as City Council Speaker Corey Johnson's chief of staff since 2015.

Here are the 12 steps that Bottcher put in his "Clean District 3" plan, along with explanations from his campaign about how each will work.

1. Increase Corner Basket Pickup

• "Bottcher is calling for a significant increase in corner basket service. Last year, in order to close the budget gap, the Department of Sanitation’s budget was slashed by $106 million. Weekly litter basket runs were cut by 63 percent—from 736 to 272. Sunday basket service was eliminated entirely. Some service was restored, but not in Council District 3. Bottcher is calling for a full restoration of basket service."

2. Increase & Improve Street Cleaning

• "Bottcher calls for street cleaning to be restored to two days a week after it was reduced to once a week in June of 2020 by Mayor de Blasio."

3. Use On-Street Containers, Not Sidewalks, For Garbage Collection

• "On trash collection days, New Yorkers are currently forced to walk by mountains of trash bags that take up valuable sidewalk space. It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of piling bags on the sidewalk in front of each building for collection, the city should allow residential communities to use on-street containers or corrals in centralized locations on each block, like they do in parts of Buenos Aires and Barcelona."

4. Create Borough-wide DSNY 'Strike Teams' That Respond To 311 Calls In Real Time

• "Bottcher will fight for the creation of ‘strike teams’ of sanitation workers who are assigned to cover each borough, responding in real-time to 311 complaints of overflowing waste baskets and other unsanitary conditions."

5. Additional BID Coverage In Village, Chelsea, and Hell's Kitchen

• "BIDs (Business Improvement Districts) often provide neighborhoods with supplemental
  sanitation services. Bottcher supports the creation of a new West Village BID along
  the Seventh Avenue South commercial corridor that has been proposed by local residents. In Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, the community should have the opportunity for more BID coverage, if they so choose."

6. Pilot Pneumatic Tube Technology

• "Looking to the future, pneumatic tube waste collection technology holds great promise and
  should be pursued in New York City. It is used in cities around the world such as Songdo, South Korea, where automated waste disposal bins suck waste directly to underground tubes that connect to centralized collection points."

7. New Litter Baskets

• "The standard wire waste bins currently found on the corners throughout New York City are
  antiquated, frequently in disrepair, and overflow quickly. Bottcher will fund the replacement of these wire baskets with new and modern high capacity bins at intersections throughout Council District 3."

8. Universal Organic Waste Collection

• It’s time to mandate universal composting services for all residents and businesses. Additionally, the city should use organic waste to generate clean energy locally, which could be done at a new green energy hub on Rikers Island."

9. Ban More Single-Use Plastics

• "Plastic waste is killing our marine ecosystem and littering our neighborhoods. Erik will fight for the phasing out of single-use plastics in New York City, including plastic straws, stir sticks, and single-use water bottles."

10. A More Accurate Sanitation Scorecard

• "The Mayor’s Office of Operations issues Street & Sidewalk Cleanliness Ratings, but the process is opaque and the cleanliness scores don’t always correspond to conditions on the ground. Bottcher will push to have this system revamped and updated, which would challenge us to do better as a city."

11. Better Regulate Corner Newspaper Boxes

• "Corner newspaper boxes are often filthy, covered with graffiti and stickers, broken, and filled with litter. Erik will fight for stricter standards with respect to design, placement, and maintenance of newspaper/magazine dispensers."

12. Expand Food Recovery Efforts

• "We must do a better job of recovering leftover food from restaurants and other food
  establishments, in order to help address food insecurity and divert that food from the waste stream."