Neighborhood Support Team
The former Speaker of the New York City Council introduced a bill called Local Law 102 of 2016.
It provided a mechanism for communities to get help from City Agencies
when a local problem required intense effort, especially if it required cross-agency team work.
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They got 23 expressions of interest from 17 Community Boards.
In the end they accepted 12 and picked Sunset Park to be first place to introduce it.
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Early last year, Renee was invited by the Mayor's Office to submit a proposal to participate in this program.
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She asked me if I would be willing to write the proposal.
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And then we heard nothing, not a word.
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As the weeks turned into months,
the day came that a tearful Renee announced
her retirement.
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A full year after writing the proposal,
Renee got a call from Cathy at the BID
with the good news that the Sunset Park BID
was not only a winner,
but would be first to try out the new system
Renee of course volunteered to attend the meeting and asked if I would come along.
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I said yes and then posted on the Sunset Parker Facebook page an invitation to our 9,600+ members to submit problems that
needed the City's attention.
The day of the meeting arrived and
nature threw a nor'easter at us.
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The Mayor's Office invited just two Sunset Park "stakeholders" - the BID and Community Board 7.
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From the City there was the Mayor's Office, and representatives from: Dept of Buildings, the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Dept of Housing, Preservation and Development, NYPD, Dept of Health and the Dept of Sanitation.
The meeting was called to order and we went around the room introducing ourselves.
I don't know if it seemed rude, but I wanted them to understand "where I was coming from" because I knew I was going to have to be forceful to properly represent Sunset Park.
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I said "I was the past President of the 72nd Precinct Community Council, past President of the 68th Precinct Council, two-time appointee to the Community Board and the unsalaried Project Manager of the NYS Senate-funded study to create a park on our waterfront. I was the consultant who created the 5th Avenue BID - waiving my fee. Also I created the Park Slope 5th Avenue BID and lobbied each of the individual holders of large properties to vote yes to tax themselves and create a BID. And currently, I am an Administrator of the 9,600 member Sunset Parker Facebook group.
As the Mayor's Office began explaining the process, I realized immediately how flawed and wrong it was.
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They wanted to sweep into a neighborhood
try to solve some problems and then move on.
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I told them that this is what Mayor Dinkins tried years ago to combat crime.
The City would send a couple of hundred extra cops to a high crime community and try to bring the crime rate down.
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But it didn't work. The criminals knew the cops would soon leave so they just waited. And when the cops packed up to go to another neighborhood
crime went back up.
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The Mayor's Office is wrong to think that their coming to visit us from time to time would change anything.
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Instead I was hoping they were coming here to give us the tools to solve these problems whenever they appeared.
Another concern of mine was that there are already two systems in place to address Sunset Park problems. One is the Community Board, which every 2 months has a District Service Cabinet meeting. And the other is 311. Do we really need to create another one?
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The District Service Cabinet meeting is when all the agencies come to Sunset Park to address community concerns. Sadly, the most important agencies usually skip this meeting and when they do attend only offer
"I don't know" or "I will get back to you".
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I suggested that the Mayor's Office work with that existing group instead of inventing a new one.
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The second system already in place is 311. But the Mayor's Office came here wanting us to restate the 311 complaints. That seemed redundant since they could just get a print-out and from that understand the pressing issues of our community.
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It sounded like this meeting was more a "feel good" get-together, to impress the locals that City Hall really cares and really not to do much more than try to fix one or two problems from time to time.
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I suggested that I had a list of problems with how 311 operated and would like to see those things fixed so that any person can become a problem solver.
Actual Problems We Discussed
First, we discussed sanitation issues.
We discussed the corner pails along 5th Avenue and how they were just about always
overflowing with trash. These pails are meant for pedestrians to drop items as they walk -
maybe a napkin from a slice of pizza, a newspaper, some incidental item.
But instead folks were bringing their household trash to the corner pails. We pointed out that
it wasn't just on 5th, it was common throughout Sunset and even when there were no pails, trash was sometimes left on corners.
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I was surprised that none of the officials seemed to know the source of this trash. We all chimed in. Folks living in illegal, over-cramped apartments are being told by their landlords not to leave trash for pick-up in front of their buildings, otherwise the City will know that too many people live there. They were told to take their trash with them, and on the way to work leave it elsewhere.
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Sanitation then explained - they cannot give a ticket based on a video surveillance tape, a Sanitation person must see the littering taking place.
They also went on to say that if someone carries trash to the pail it is only littering and not dumping. It is then only a $100 fine. But if they bring it there or anywhere with a car the fine is $2000 and an additional fine can be levied on the owner of the car and the car can be impounded and the dumper could go to jail.
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The Sanitation personnel were very nice men, but we were getting the old
"Well, there is nothing we can do."
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Then we moved on to schools that leave their buildings trash poorly packaged at the curb and it flies around. We were told Sanitation cannot ticket another City agency.
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We then brought up about how Sanitation workers seem to send one guy ahead of the truck to pull trash bags and pails from the curb and put them in between parked cars. I pointed out that it is fine if the truck is in sight, but we've seen it sitting there for 40 or more minutes causing a problem when a driver wants to move his car. I was stunned to hear that some Sanitation workers pay homeless men on the street $10 to run ahead and pull the trash out for them. Personally, I don't want untrained men acting like Sanitation workers. They have no legal responsibility for any damage they may do (there was a complaint of a broken car window caused by a wood item being tossed in the street a few years ago) and I feel that this may even be the reason why some of my trash doesn't get picked up.
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I don't accept any of this.
In a few days, at the bottom of the page I will share a strategy and ask for your help.
We were very pleased that the Commanding Officer of the 72nd attended the meeting, although arriving an hour late.
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Questions were raised about illegal parking under the Gowanus. Trucks, cars, RV's and even a parade float sit there for weeks or even months at a time.
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They rarely get ticketed and you can tell from the layer of soot how long the vehicles have been there.
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In addition, construction companies, probably working on the Gowanus store their heavy equipment there and also leave construction debris there for weeks - all illegal.
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No real resolution was offered.
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Another Police issue was the NCO program. This is the latest "phony" program by NYPD to make us think that they are involved in the community. Two officers are assigned to sectors and meet with the local residents and businesses. Renee brought up that the 5th Ave BID is in three sectors but only the cops from the sector where the BID office is ever met with her. She said both ends of the BID are left out. The CO seemed to think this was not important. But Renee persisted saying she needs to be kept aware of crime trends and robberies on those two end areas.
Eventually the CO said he would include those blocks, only along 5th in the BID sector - really not a good solution.
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Next I bought up about E-Bikes. Historically I understood they were illegal to operate, to own and to sell in New York City. The CO said it was legal to repair them though. He also said that if they see one in a front gate or a business they can impound them. But he also tried to use an excuse that he has no more room at the Police Station to store them - to me that is unacceptable.
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Everyone enjoyed hearing our stories of e-bikes driving on sidewalks and ignoring all traffic rules but no progress was made. I asked what happens if the police stopped someone with no ID on an ebike
and his response was kind of a multiple choice offer, but not real response.
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He did say that he has been visiting restaurants and informing them and he seemed to think they were complying - but I can tell you they are not. He then tried to say that it was not the businesses using the bikes illegally it was private residents visiting friends. I see very very little evidence of that.
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A gentleman from Immigrant Affairs tried to make some kind of statement that the drivers were innocent elderly people just trying to make a living to survive. This is the only time I lost my temper as I shouted "Bullshit".
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The law applies to everyone equally. And the law is not just to protect the pedestrians but also the alleged elderly driver. Being poor is never an excuse for performing a dangerous illegal activity (unless your name is Jean Val Jean).
And I have to wonder how this poor elderly man got $800 to buy the bike.
In reality, what is happening is, the stores buy the bikes and loan them to their delivery people but
deny ownership to avoid getting in trouble - plain and simple.
We then moved on (this synopsis may be out of order, I am writing this from memory).
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We went on to discuss alternate side parking and how the police have always allowed us to illegally double park but not get a ticket. A question was raised about blocks with a bike lane. In theory, a car with even just a tire touching the lane can be ticketed. It was asked if for the 90 minutes of alternate side the police could allow cars to park in the bike lane. The CO saw no problem saying that as long as there is clear street path (where the sweeper will be going) it will be allowed. But the question of non-police agents was brought up. The CO said he would draft a letter to the agents informing them of our agreement.
When we filed the original application, TB and Hep B were concerns in Sunset. But we didn't sit on our hands and wait for outside help. We did research and we printed our own flyers in 3 languages and then we went into the community to make contact with ethnic civic groups to partner with them in spreading this info. So this was a problem they thought they were coming to help us with, but we had already acted.
Another concern over a year ago involved criminal acts or muggings (often for cell phones) of Asians in the corridor between 59th Street subway station and moving inland.
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But again, we couldn't sit by and wait, so we went out and spread the word and met with the Asian Patrol and actually did a ride along with them and felt that they had an excellent understanding of the problem.
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But we feel more still needs to be done. We have to let all immigrants, documented or not, know that we care about them and that we want to help.
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Sadly I was told that in many parts of Asia the police or "public safety" officers are actually the arm of the government to repress them. This is a key reason why many of the immigrants do not seek help from the police.
Last week, two Sunset Parkers asked me to bring up an interesting problem (I should have listed it above with the other police issues, but again, I am kind of tired and doing this from memory.
For quite awhile now, police cruisers were "touring" our park by running over the grassed areas creating disgusting ruts - destroying the grass and making the ground uneven and gouged.
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The CO immediately apologized and seemed to be talking very straight forward and honest about it - there was no attempt to explain or cover-up - he said it was wrong and even he was guilty and it will not happen again. He admitted this wasn't just two cops screwing up, there were several. Also, the FDNY had to be called to pull one patrol car out of the mud.
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He has issued an order prohibiting this behavior and actually reprimanded at least two of the officers.
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But sadly he offered no help in fixing the damage - he really didn't seem to offer much more than it is not a police matter. And we know that Parks will drag their feet. This is an issue that the Mayor's Office could have resolved for us and they did not step up to the plate.
(just like the other issues above I will address this at the bottom of the page - we are not going to ignore this)
I want to thank Cat Williams for the pictures from the meeting and Claudia Lechuga for the park photos and all the detailed info she provided.
Although we were told to bring specifics, when I got to the specific lists, the Mayor's Office abruptly closed the meeting. It happened so fast my head spun. Obviously they intended to "glad" talk us and blow smoke up our "skirts" and then leave smiling.
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But I insisted on getting an agreement that we can email them our detailed list for their help.
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That list is as follows:
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1. 18 Wheeler Semi Trucks on Our Residential Side Streets
2. Massage Parlors as Fronts for Prostitution
3. Craigs List Postings for Prostitution in Sunset Park
4. Homeless Dumped in Sunset with No Social Service Network (especially from 247 49th St Sleep Inn Motel)
5. Dept of Homeless Services Breaking Promise to Announce New Homeless Hotels in Advance
6. Traffic Light needed at 31st Street & 3rd Avenue by Liberty View Industrial Plaza
7. Traffic Light or 3-Way Stop at 45th Street & 6th Avenue
8. Stench from Catch Basin in front of 317 49th Street
9. Need for DOS Trash Pails along 3rd Avenue
10. Need for DOS Trash Pails in Playground behind Dewey Middle School
11. Sidewalks around Greenwood not Cleaned Regularly and yet Not Ticketed for Failure to Do So
12. Litter Ticketing on Residential Blocks Not Done Fair, Process Must be Changed
13. Darkness along Tree-lined Side Streets - Are 3-Family Homes Required to Have Lighting?
14. All Buildings Must Have Display Address on Building
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It was pretty obvious that City Hall wanted to do a little "Dog & Pony" show here in Sunset Park.
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We kind of ruined that, but I am hoping that in the end they will look back one day, soon, and realize that some great things came of this meeting, just not the way they planned.
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I am going to write a proposal as to how this program could really make a difference, not just in Sunset, but throughout NYC.
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I believe this can be a way that each and every resident, young & old, tech-savy and not
can feel empowered by being able to
control their surrounding environment in a positive way.
With your input, I want to write a proposal that we can take to the Community Board, elected officials and other stakeholders for their input and joint support.
I would like to then lobby the City Council to amendment the public law that authorized today's meeting and make it truly community-friendly and effective.
I would also like to come up with a list of changes for the operation of 311.
It is a great resource for New Yorkers, but it has significant faults. I guess most everyone feels it is too big to change. I have never been afraid to tackle things too big...
And finally, I will draw up a strategy to progress on each of the problems listed above.
This is not the end, it is just the beginning.