Posted by: Noel Jones
After years of asking for a street sweeping program in the West Ward, we will finally get our wish this Spring. While we celebrate this development, it is worthwhile to remember that this did not happen the first, second or fifth time that we got together and asked for it. Progress is an endurance game, and if we are persistent and pace ourselves without giving up, change does come.
It is also important to give credit where credit is due: Mayor Panto did some creative financing to make a comprehensive street sweeping program a reality. Thank you, Mayor.
Below are articles in the local papers today covering this issue that West Ward residents havebeen fighting for, for so long. Please see my earlier post to review the other two parts of the 3-tier garbage problem in our neighborhood. This will be a big help, but won't solve the compounded problem in the West Ward of the high rental rate and lack of code enforcement on absentee landlords. So we still have work to do. But for now, it's time to celebrate--we did it!
Morning Call Article by Michael Duck on New Street Sweeping Program in the WW
Express Times Article by Ed Sieger on WW Street Sweeping to Start This Spring
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11 comments:
I would like to address one point in the articles on the issue of parking. THERE IS ONLY A PARKING PROBLEM IN THE WEST WARD AT NIGHT. In the day time, many people are at work, leaving lots of easy places to park on the street.
If the City is truly worried about this, why not schedule the program from 9-12, instead of 8-11? I do not think it will be a problem, as most commuters on my block seem to be gone before 8am. But if the City is as worried as they profess to be, then why schedule to begin at 8am instead of an hour later, when parked car density would be at its very lowest?
The last time they scheduled a street cleaning program, it was in the middle of the night, which made no sense for 2 reasons:
1. everyone is home from work sleeping in the middle of the night, so the density of parked cars is at its highest possible point
2. nobody is ok with getting out of bed in the middle of night to move their cars
This was a program set up to fail from the beginning. It is very important that this new program be set up to succeed.
can't wait to start seeing the renters on my get parking tickets. I mean, if they can't follow the garbage can ordinance, I doubt they'll pay attention to the parking rules.
a few of them car pool, or get picked up by a van in the morning. some cars hang around for a week or so, disappear for a while, then come back for a while again, so it'll be fun to watch what happens.
Julie Zando-Dennis says:
Street sweeping is sorely needed and will be a great boon to the neighborhood. Thank you to all involved.
We notice a huge positive difference when the current sweeper goes up Walnut or Ferry. Litter begets litter! ("begets" - am I sounding too Old Testament LOL?)
Tim--I know what you mean by "litter begets litter." When I first bought my house it had been empty for almost a year, and because no one was taking care of the property regularly, passersby had decided that my yard was the place to chuck litter. Strangely enough, after I cleaned it up a few times, people littered much less frequently. I also noticed over time that some of the garbage wasn't litter at all, but was loose garbage that had fallen out of other garbage cans where garbage was improperly packaged by tenants of absentee landlords, so that it blew out and around the streets in the wind, eventually landing in my hedges. I have literally watched it fall out, tumble down the hill and then get blown into my yard. That is why code enforcement is such an important element to solving the garbage problem in the neighborhood. But it is true that there is a psychological effect that takes places when a property is regularly cleaned up and shows other signs of responsibility and care. Strange but true.
EHB makes a good point about ticketing vehicles, which leads me to something I've promoted for years: the city needs its own tow truck, driver and impound lot. Why give away this control to Easton Auto Body (whose property by the way is one of the major contributors to ecological degradation and blight along the Lehigh Heights escarpment)?
We also need to boot vehicles illegally parked for five days so they can't move to another location and do it again. Charge them to remove the boot and the musical chair games will stop.
I've been given various excuses why these things can't happen (insurance risk, etc.) but I'm not buying them. I've also spoken to a lot of people (including current EPD members wanting to remain anonymous) who agree we should be doing it.
DRL
If they cleaned the streets while we're working then they couldn't ticket us for being parked on the side of the street to be cleaned for the day/night. Then the city would lose out on acquiring it's residents' money.
Ahhhh Easton
Finally some cleanliness but why does it have to be the city all the time. Our residents need to have more pride in their neighborhood and clean their own sidewalks and gutters.
Also, it was nice to see the thank you for the mayor and council but I don't believe he should have been chastised for recommending his wife to zoning. She was good for our neighborhood the last time she was there.
Anon 9:28am -- I have heard this argument from the City a lot in the last couple of years as residents have pushed for this program. As I stated in my post, the problem with asking concerned home-owners to "have pride" and pick up the neighborhood is that we are completely outnumbered by rentals because the City has steadily allowed investors to convert single family homes into multi-rental units over the years. Investors have also been allowed to convert our storefronts, which used to be on almost every main corner of the WW, into apartment buildings, so that rebuilding a localized economy in our neighborhood is very hard now, with no spaces to put new businesses. These conversions have created a rental density that the WWNP tells me is now approaching 65%. Many of these properties are owned by absentee landlords, who do not care whether their tenants package garbage properly, because the City has not enforced codes regardless how much we have asked them to--hopefully that will change this year. There are some green rehab projects due to start this year, but they will only convert two houses, maybe three. We have been asking for de-conversion incentives for the last couple of years and still nothing has been announced in that regard.
So, you have a high percentage of tenants of absentee landlords who do not package garbage properly so that it blows around in the streets and into people yards, and we also have a large transient rental population that tends to litter.
I have said it before, and I will say it again, it is not fair to put the onus on good residents to pick up after bad residents with a rental rate as high as it is, and for a service that our tax money should be paying for. I have never lived in a neighborhood (except in Bahia, Brazil!) that did not have a street sweeping program and I have lived in poor neighborhoods for most of my adulthood. If Spanish Harlem can have a regular, comprehensive street cleaning program, so should the WW. It is basic services like these that our tax money is SUPPOSED to be used for before anything else--especially development projects.
As for thinking we should not criticize the mayor and city council for nepotism and croneyism, I guess nepotism and croneyism are ok with you then, and you must be in good company because the same voters come out year after year to straight-ticket the same people into office over and over, and clearly without any concern for whether or not meaningful change has come to the residents of the WW.
That is not what this blog is about. We give credit where credit is due, and criticism where criticism is due. That is our right and responsibility as American citizens.
Street sweeping during the day seems to be sensible. I'm a homeowner occupant and a weekly parking shuffle is a major irritant. The spot in front of my house and those of my neighbors are clean and certainly don't require weekly parking harrassment.
Stan68ar~
How much does your block empty out after 8am? I know my street is tough to park on at night, but during the day it's about 80% empty.
As I live a free-lance life-style, I'm around during the day, and when I walk or drive around the neighborhood, it seems to be the same situation on most other streets in the WW.
There is one spot that concerns me though, which is the street in front of the jail, because anyone who works with the jail parks there during the day--that might be a tricky spot for residents to re-park their cars, but then again, it's easy to find spots a block or two away.
In my opinion, people in Easton don't know what a serious parking problem is. People here get upset if they can't park right in front of their living room windows, and feel like "someone to MY spot!" even though it's all public parking. After having lived in New York City for many years, I can tell you that David and I have spent as much as a full hour, driving around looking for parking. That's an extreme, but quite regularly, when driving into the City we've had to look for 20-30 minutes for a spot--it's a major drag. By comparison, Easton, and specifically the West Ward, are a piece of cake.
It's important to keep in mind when we do get upset about parking, that the cause of the parking issue is CONVERSIONS and lack of CODE ENFORCEMENT. So if people are getting upset, they need to focus that energy on urging the mayor and City Council to pass de-conversion incentives, and enforcement of codes. The City for far too long has allow investors to buy up properties in the West Ward and convert them into multi-family units, meaning that each family has one or two cars parked on a street that was never designed to hold so many cars. Then, where code enforcement is concerned, you often have several more people living in a unit than are supposed to--and those people come with even more cars. There is an apartment building around the corner from me where my neighbors tell me the bottom floor was rented to a family of four, but now there are 11 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment on the main floor of what used to be a single family home. That apartment alone, according to my neighbors, has 5 cars parked on the street. So if you estimate 1-2 cars for each of the other two floors, there are 7-9 cars parked on one block for just one building, making parking limited for residents of the other buildings on that block.
So please don't get mad that we're finally getting our streets cleaned with our tax money, but rather take that energy to a City Council meeting and protest the number of conversions and lack of code enforcement, not the street cleaning program that we so badly need.
This is actually a great issue to bring up for discussion at Mike Fleck's WW Summit at Uncle Wesley's tonight at 7pm. Mike is asking us to tell him what we as residents want on his agenda for us as our new WW rep on City Council.
I hope to see you there!
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