Some neighborhoods in Queens are about to get a cleanup thanks to an expansion of trash pickups by the Sanitation Department. NY1's Ruschell Boone filed the following report.
From litter on the sidewalk to overflowing trash cans and illegal dumping, Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood has become a real mess.
"It is very disgusting," said one person in the area.
But that's about to change after years of complaints from residents and local businesses. The local councilwoman has secured city funding to add an extra day of trash pickup each week.
"So much complaints have come in about garbage. We often flooded the Department of Sanitation with those concerns, and they would come back to the consul members and say, 'We don't have enough resources,'" said City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley of Queens.
The additional day of trash collection will cost more than $28,000 for the remainder of the budget year, which runs through June.
Crowley secured most of the money through the City Council's Clean initiative program. The rest, about $8,000 will come from her allotment of discretionary funds.
"Each commercial district is awarded the same amount of money, and they get to decide how they spend it. So I'm spend it with nonprofits, but many actually asked for additional DSNY and why service," said Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.
The extra day of trash collection will occur along most of the neighborhood's main commercials corridors: Fresh Pond Road from Metropolitan to Myrtle avenues, Myrtle Avenue from Fresh Pond Road to 80th Street, Metropolitan Avenue from 80th Street to 73rd Place and Grand Avenue from 61st to 74th streets
For Theodore Renz, it's great news. As head of the Myrtle Avenue business Improvement District, he's been complaining about the problem for years
"We use to get extra basket service about 7 years ago, and when the cutbacks came in 2007 or 2008, they cut the service," Renz said..
Now that they have the extra day, people are also calling for more sanitation enforcement. The city says officers often patrol the area, but it is hard to catch people littering and dumping illegally in the act.