Last week, the mayor's office announced an increase of $14.5 million in funding for citywide cleaning operations. The 'Get Stuff Clean' initiative includes funding to clean up 'No Man's Land' areas, increase litter basket maintenance, and bolster rat mitigation. Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations, joins to talk about the plans for cleaning up the city.
[song Rats by Cyndi Lauper plays]
Rats, they're everywhere, but you just can't see
Rats, they're smart and bold just like you and me
Rats, they eat our food and they spread disease
Don't kill the rat, he can stay with me
Brian Lehrer: No, that's not The Brian Lehrer Show theme, though maybe it should be. That's the Cyndi Lauper song Rats from the Apple TV show Central Park as we'll welcome Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi in just a minute to talk mostly about the Adams administration's new Get Stuff Clean initiative for streets and parks. First, here's a montage of some of the city council members in our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series this year when I asked, "What's the most common reason constituents call your office?"
Council Member Lincoln Restler: Without a doubt, the number one issue that we hear about from neighbors is garbage.
Council Member Rita Joseph: They reach out about definitely trash. Trash is the number one thing for rats. [laughs]
Council Member Kevin Riley: Sanitation, man. It's the abundance of garbage that's plaguing our community.
Council Member Diana Ayala: I think sanitation would probably come in second. The streets are filthy. We have rats everywhere.
Brian Lehrer: Council members Rita Joseph, Lincoln Restler, Kevin Riley, and Diana Ayala on our show on different weeks this year. Here's the mayor after visiting an area they just cleaned up around New UTrecht Avenue in 44th Street last week.
Mayor Eric Adams: The residents of this community have been talking about this for a long time. Trash on the sidewalk, equipment being discarded, just no real conservative or proactive response to the trash.
Brian Lehrer: The mayor last week. Deputy mayor for operations, Meera Joshi, joins us live now. Deputy Mayor, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Thank you so much. That's the most unique walk-on song I've ever had, so I really appreciate it.
[laughter]
Brian Lehrer: Yes, good. I'm glad you liked it. For people who don't read city hall workflow charts, first of all, which means just about everybody, what does a deputy mayor for operations do? People may remember you as the Taxi & Limousine Commission chair in the last administration. What's your portfolio in this one?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: It's a great question. I really appreciate translating what I do in a way that everybody can understand it because what we do is we oversee the agencies that affect all of our public realm in the city and what I call "everyday services." That's the services every New Yorker depends on every day from when they wake up in the morning to when they go to bed. They need them to work in a way that doesn't interrupt their normal ability to get away to do their jobs, go to school. That's the water running out of your faucet, the ability to flush your toilet, your trash pickup, your roads, your bridges, your building permits, and all of the public space and the municipal construction that we do.
Brian Lehrer: All right, tell us about--
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: All of our city--
Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Well, I just want to say, this is one distinction from the last administration. It also includes all of our city parks. In the last administration, parks fell under the deputy mayor for economic development and workforce development. Now, it falls under operations, which is a fundamental switch and an acknowledgment that our green space is our core infrastructure. It's an important part of how New Yorkers respond to our city, especially after COVID when you saw more and more New Yorkers reunite with green space in the city. They haven't let go of that relationship.
Brian Lehrer: Great, so tell us about Get Stuff Clean. What's new here?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: This is a real effort to view city cleanup from the perspective of New Yorkers instead of the perspective of disparate city agencies. When you walk around the city, you might see trash under a bridge, trash on and off ramps, trash in a commercial corridor. To you, that's just disorder and dysfunction as our mayor has so often pointed out. To determine who's responsible for picking up that trash would take probably a multi-level flowchart because it depends whose jurisdiction it is.
That has historically really been divided up and ended up with the city and the people who live in the city and walk through the city feeling the disorder that's really there underneath the organization. We took away all of the silos and really put the core competency that's needed back with the agency that does trash, and that's DSNY. Now, the on-and-off ramps, the bridges, litter baskets, and commercial corridors increased, really helps New Yorkers understand that there's one place for trash collection and litter, and that is DSNY.
Then you'll see these No Man's Lands, which have been often ignored, clean. That started on Monday and I think New Yorkers will see the response quickly. I want to also point out. Another thing we did is with parks. We added a second shift of cleanup and that's with the parks department. Most people don't realize that parks department maintenance really stops late afternoon.
We use the parks so much more and we want to encourage New Yorkers to use parks so much more. Adding a second shift in some of our most used and most in need of maintenance parks, about 60-plus, is really important in order for us to get people back into the parks and have confidence in using this asset. We have 30,000 acres of green space in New York City, so it's a real city treasure.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your call is welcome on trash and rats for Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Yes, you can point out an issue on your block. They want to know. Yes, you can ask about the elements of the Get Stuff Clean program in general that the deputy mayor was just listing. Yes, you can make suggestions for how to get stuff clean even better. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.
Let me ask you to go a little deeper on some of the things that you just mentioned. What are these so-called No Man's Land areas? I know I saw a clip of somebody. I think the mayor was there at a spot under the Cross Bronx Expressway. People might think, "Well, why am I affected by something that's under the Cross Bronx Expressway?" Nobody lives under the Cross Bronx Expressway. I know a lot of people live near the Cross Bronx expressway and that's a whole issue, but what is this No Man's Land and is that a good example?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: No Man's Land refers to places where there hasn't been clear agency responsibility. It can be things like underneath a bridge, on on-and-off ramp, or what I call them pedestrian slivers. They're green spaces that we often see a triangle here or with a bench and a couple of trees. They are places that New Yorkers see visually in their routine travels throughout the city. They're also places where it has become easy for trash to pile up and be ignored.
The visual effect of consistently seeing these pile-up centers without a response from the city is, I think, very disconcerting for most New Yorkers. Trash begets trash. If you have trash piling up in these areas, you also have people feeling that it's perfectly okay to dump more there, that it is actually just a large open trash bin. That's exactly what we need to reverse. By consolidating the cleanup responsibilities with DSNY, we hope to change what the visual perspective is and also what the public's response has been to these areas, which in some places is very detrimental, and that's to add more trash to them.
Brian Lehrer: Many of the council members this year have also mentioned illegal dumping. Our latest guest, Council Member Mercedes Narcisse from Southeast Brooklyn, just this week said people abandoning their old cars is also a problem there. I see you have a campaign here against what you call the scourge of illegal dumping. How do you crack down on that?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: We use cameras in this Get Stuff Clean initiative at additional funding, $1.4 million, to be added for both the cameras for those areas, which we know have been prevalent spots for illegal dumping, so we can catch the license plates of those doing the dumping. Then we issue violations and the penalties are hefty. The program so far has been very, very successful. When we double down on it and put cameras in more places and able to catch more people, we will be able to curb the illegal dumping.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Before we take some phone calls, what's the most effective aspect or what do you hope will be of all of these things with respect to rats as you see it?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: I'm glad you raised that. With rats, and they are persistent creatures, they need very little food. Most people don't realize this, but their gestation period is about a month. They have about 8 to 10 babies with each litter. You could theoretically have one rat that's living on an ounce of food a day or less like 80 rats in a year. We're up against a multiplier, which is pretty formidable.
The thing about rats is you have to take away their food. The way we take away their food is really multi-prompt. We take away their food by pulling organics out of the trash stream. That's one third of our waste. When it's pulled out of the trash stream and it's not in black bags mixed in with your regular trash on the street, then that's less enticement for the rats to be attacking your trash. Also, making sure that the time that your trash is sitting on the street is curtailed, which we did with the set-out rules, is equally important.
We'll be with this Get Stuff Clean Initiative adding funds to rat mitigation, which means adding exterminators, also experimenting with different extermination appliance equipment. They don't really call that appliances, I don't think, and also really getting a better sense using technology and sensors on what our actual rat census is within the city. The key is you have to really take the food away from the rats. We can do a lot as a city, containerization, less time on the streets, pulling the organics out, but people need to help too.
If you're throwing food as litter, be assured you are actually increasing the rat population by that very act. Ultimately, New Yorkers need to think about that because you can't just complain about the rats. You also have to be part of the solution, which is making sure you're putting your trash in its place, you're containerizing, and you're making sure that it is not a wonderful city for rats to thrive in, which is the situation that we're currently in.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, I said we were going to go to a call after that answer, but I want to follow up on one aspect of that. When you talk about separating the organics, I know you've got an organics program going in Queens right now. What's happening in Queens? I think your office is saying this is working and it's a good model for the rest of the city, so tell everybody about it. I think people can start applying things like this individually, as well as tell us whatever else the city is going to roll out.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Sure. It's been very, very, very successful. It's the nation's largest organics collection program. The thing about New York City is that's just the borough of Queens, right? With one borough, we're able to top the nation. Today, we've pulled 5.7 million pounds of organics, diverted them from landfill, and that's through just the organics program in Queens.
What I think is most important about it is we've regularized organics. We didn't make New Yorkers come to us and tell us that they wanted to partake in an organics program. We came to them. It's curbside. It's part of your regular trash pickup. It doesn't take a lot of foresight. You can decide you want to do it. Put your stuff in a bin. Put it out on the street with your regular trash and it'll get picked up.
It's that kind of making it part of the regular routine of New Yorkers that allows for adoption in rates that we haven't seen in any of the other opt-in programs. We're getting three times the amount of tonnage per district than we've gotten at any of the opt-in programs previously. Week over week, you see more and more people participating in the program because it is accessible. I think that's key.
New Yorkers, they are willing and able and want to do the right thing by trash diversion, but it has to be accessible. We're busy people here in New York, so you can't make it so difficult for us to do the right thing. This program really plays to that nature of people and understanding that this is the way forward. We have to pull the stream out of the landfill and we have to make sure that people are able to do it in their regular routine.
Brian Lehrer: When you say organics, that's basically food waste. Are you saying that you can't put it out in the black trash bags that a lot of people use? You have to put it in some kind of enclosed container because that's what prevents the rats from getting at it?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Yes, it prevents the rats from getting at it and it's also because you're separating it from your regular trash. The trash truck will come by and they'll pick up the bin with the organics. Put it in with the organics. They'll pick up the bag with trash and they'll put it in with the trash. The key thing there is it's in a container, so the trash that's most exciting for the rats is contained and not accessible to them.
Brian Lehrer: We're talking about the city's new Get Stuff Clean program with Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi. Deanna in Inwood, you're on WNYC. Hello, Deanna.
Deanna: Hi, good morning, Brian. I love your show. Today's my first time that I get picked, so I'm excited. Unfortunately, I have major complaints about Inwood where I live, east of Broadway. West of Broadway is a totally different scene. I live on Dyckman right off the 1 Train, and that area is impossible. The kind of trash that I see just walking from the train to my apartment. I see sneakers. I see shopping carts. I see tires.
There was a dead raccoon. I've made so many complaints to 311 because the MTA doesn't take care of that area of their block. There's graffiti on the wall. I don't even think I live in New York. The other part of it is that I have a dog and I pick up after my dog, but I will walk blocks trying to find a trash can, which is a problem. If you don't have a place where you can deposit your garbage, what do you do? You throw it.
I think that that's an issue that should be addressed. Just more trash cans on every corner and every block. Also, just asking the organization like the MTA to take care of the block, the areas of their office. The other part I just wanted to comment on the composting discussion. I actually tried to get my building to join the compost program. I was told by the city that, "No," the sanitation does not pick up compost in my area. I have to get a multiple number of buildings to join.
I don't know how accessible it really is. Maybe this is speaking for houses, but you have to get several buildings on board in order to have the pickup for compost. In addition to that, in your apartment, I think people would be worried that if they're containing the food that it's going to bring roaches and rats to their home. Maybe if there are some bins where you put it on your kitchen counter that you can encourage more people to actually sort out their garbage and then have a place where the building collects.
Brian Lehrer: Great. Deanna, let me get you some answers. You put three really big things on the table there and let's deal with each of them. Deputy Mayor, where do you want to start with Deanna?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: I'll start with the composting. Your situation brings up the discrepancy between an opt-in program that's hard to use because, look, your personal experience is you've spent time and energy trying to convince your building to do this. Under the opt-in program, unless your building agrees to do it, you personally cannot benefit from the program.
That's a lot of hurdles for a New Yorker to try to do the right thing. Then in the end, you're not able to do it versus what we're doing in Queens, which is it's curbside. You can just put it out on your curb. Everybody's automatically in. When it comes to having something in an apartment, yes, I know that's in the past. This is something we'll certainly look into whether it can be done again or if it's being done.
The city was giving out basically countertop composting bins that you could keep by your kitchen sink and use it during the week for just that very issue that you raised, which is preventing roaches within your apartment. The second question around litter baskets is really good. Again, it goes to that core thing. We have to make keeping the city clean. Something that's very easy for New Yorkers who want to do the right thing to do. Not having enough litter baskets is one of those issues.
In addition to increasing litter basket pickup, which we've done twice through the Adams administration once just this, last week, and then earlier in the budget cycle, I think raising the issue of, "Do we have enough litter baskets out there," is really important and can certainly be part of what DSNY looks at. Because for everyone who wants to do the right thing, the city should not be the impediment for you doing that, so I appreciate that.
The first one you raised is at the core of our Get Stuff Clean, which is let's not fight over jurisdictional differences. Let's make sure the city is cleaning up everything regardless of what agency it was originally tagged to do it. You raised the real city versus state issue, which is the city can control what the city can control. We will work hand in hand with the state and the MTA to highlight those areas that need to be cleaned.
I'll certainly flag this one now that you've raised it, but it is that coordination that's necessary for people to feel confident in New York. We've done it as a city in Get Stuff Clean. Working with the state to make sure we do it as a city and state because there's many state entities that operate within the city is equally important for New Yorkers to feel confident in their neighborhood and communities.
Brian Lehrer: I was just thinking, and Deanna, thank you for raising such good questions. I was just wondering the other day about how the city determines at which corners trash cans are placed. I was walking in Queens near Flushing Hospital, south of Northern Boulevard there. I had something I wanted to throw away. I was walking for a few blocks and none of the corners had trash cans. I thought, "Wait, where I live in my part of Manhattan, there are trash cans every few blocks." How is that decision made?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: I will certainly, and I know you've had our wonderful DSNY commissioner on, pose that question to DSNY. We're happy to get back to you. It may be that it is a decade-old map or multiple decades-old map. There's obviously lots that we know from cellphones and technology about where people congregate that could certainly guide where litter baskets should be placed. I'll happily follow up on that one, but I'm glad that you both raised it.
Brian Lehrer: Good. Well, we're going to stay in Upper Manhattan and take a call from Peter in Washington Heights now. Peter, you're on WNYC with Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi. Hello.
Peter: Hello. Two questions for you, ma'am. The first is about rats. Our HDFC co-ops don't have rats. The rental slumlord buildings on our blocks do. When you talk to exterminators about what the issue is, they say that the rental buildings just get fines and the landlords don't really care. They suggested that if you compelled the landlords of those buildings to hire a pest control service, the problem would be significantly reduced. They say they get the fines. They still don't hire pest control services.
The other is really small board. At the corner of 157th and Broadway and going up Broadway a few blocks, we have constantly overfilled and overturned garbage pails. We could really use those compactor bins that can't be opened. People root through the bins looking for stuff, returnable bottles or food, or just we have a lot of EDPs here coming out of the hospital and turn over bins at night. I've spoken to sanitation in District 12 and they just can't cope with the frequency of these overflowing bins. Not enough trucks, they say.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Thank you for raising both of those points. Making sure that we have an effective rat mitigation solution with private actors is really important to getting the rat population down and finding that can be the cost of doing business if the alternative is that you just continue to pay the fines and that's all that happens. We'll actively explore wherever we have city leverage to withdraw some authority or take action that's much more of an injunctive nature than fine.
When it comes to rat mitigation, that's certainly going to be part of the Get Stuff Clean and the additional funds that have gone into rat mitigation this year because we want to make sure that we're effective, right? Sending inspectors out to constantly find someone and the situation never changes. The revenue that we get from funds doesn't cover the cost and it's certainly not an effective use of city resources. I'm glad you raised that point. As far as the overfilled litter baskets, that's a combination of people illegally dumping.
I call it illegal dumping light. It's people putting maybe commercial trash in the public litter basket, which shouldn't be there. It's, in part, solved by increased litter basket pickup, but that's also not the ultimate solution. The ultimate solution is around education enforcement against that kind of people using the litter basket, commercial businesses using the litter basket as their own personal commercial litter basket. Two, around containerization.
We've started piloting that in some boroughs. The long-term vision for the city is to have much more containerization, especially in our commercial corridors. It's the standard in many global cities. That's the standard we need to introduce in New York City. It comes with a price, right? That might mean beloved parking spots are taken away and containers are put in their place. That's a vision and a goal that we absolutely have to stay steadfast on if we're going to have a long-term solution to the city's cleanliness challenges.
Brian Lehrer: One more call. Carlo at JFK Airport. Am I saying that right? Carlo, you're on WNYC. Hello.
Carlo: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Deputy Mayor. I want to thank both of you, Brian, for having the most informative show on radio and the deputy mayor for this program to pick up the city's garbage. [chuckles]
Brian Lehrer: Thank you.
Carlo: Like I said, I'm here in JFK. Living in JFK, JFK is beautiful until you hit the ramps to hit either the Belt Parkway or the Van Wyck Expressway. Then you have tons of garbage on the ramps. I'm like, "I bet you, this is because nobody wants to claim this territory, neither the city nor JFK." They just leave it to the wind, I guess.
Another question that I have or issue that I have is that my aunt here in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn is afraid to put garbage out on her sidewalk because they get ticketed. I tell them that they could put out furniture or whatever on certain days because I show them the calendars on the 311 maps. They're afraid to put garbage outside. They leave it in the yard, in the driveway. I want to see if that's an issue that could be resolved.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Carlo. Thank you. You got to love a New Yorker, Deputy Mayor, who looks at the maps on 311.
[laughter]
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Yes, thank you. That really boils down to an outreach gap, right? If you're looking at the maps and you're seeing that it's okay and you're doing far more than most New Yorkers do, but it's still not enough to create confidence with your own relatives that they could put this kind of garbage out because the government has said it's okay and it'll be picked up because of fear of getting ticketed, then there's an outreach gap.
A lot of what we want to work on as an administration across agencies, not just DSNY, is making sure that we're communicating services to people in a way that is receptive to them, in a way that they can understand and feel confident in. I'm not sure that going on 311 maps is the most, I would say, popular method of figuring out what you can do, the do's and don'ts. Although I applaud your fortitude on that, I do think we have more work to do in terms of outreach of regular city services and what the do's and don'ts are so people don't have a fear of the city services. They are actually using them.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Carlo. Good luck out there. To wrap up, I should say I've heard some skeptics about how much of a difference all this will make. Maybe they will be assuaged by the level of detail that you've been giving here today, and how many of these things maybe don't take so much money but just doing it right. Some city hall observers have said to me that $14 million, which is the number that I see the city is saying this is going to cost, $14 million is a lot to me and you, but it's hardly any money in the city's $100 billion a year budget. It's just not going to go very far to accomplish all these ambitious and very well-articulated goals that you have laid out here citywide. What would you say to that?
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: I'd say we can throw money at problems. Sometimes we throw lots of money at problems and they're not solved. If you throw money at a problem and you have a real strategy, you get a lot more bang for your buck. $14 million isn't a huge amount in the scope of the entire city budget. If there is a core strategy that's effective behind it, it can go a long way. That's what I focus on when I look at how we're budgeting and how we're rolling out operations. Is there a real strategy to get it done? Because if there isn't, it doesn't matter how much money you put into it.
The $14 million also represents 200 additional sanitation workers advancing second-shift cleaners in parks and a whole host of focus strategies on decade-long problems that haven't been addressed. The proof will be in the streets. I think that's how we build confidence, I can say, as much as I want to on what the program is. The DSNY commissioner and her team do an excellent job on explaining it as well. The real thing is New Yorkers are going to have to see a change. That's the challenge for us and that's the challenge I'm assured that we will meet.
Brian Lehrer: Can I take advantage before you go of your expertise on transportation as the past Taxi & Limousine Commission chair and staffer with Sam Schwartz, the transportation consulting firm, which I know you did after? Taxi drivers just got a raise. Long time coming, right? Uber drivers too, which will also push up prices for riders. I'm curious if you have a take with your, I think, five years of being head of TLC if they struck the right balance.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Yes, thanks. I'd love to answer those questions. I want to also add. I did work sometime in the Biden administration with a trucking regulator. Those drivers suffer from some of the same economic pressures that our taxi drivers and FHV drivers do as well. They're independent contractors responsible for covering every expense and little control over the income stream.
I want to just step back for a minute. The reason that we in New York City are able to actually gauge whether or not a driver need an increase and how much that increase should be is because we have fundamental transparency that basically no other city in the nation has. We know how much every Uber and Lyft driver is making. We know how much every taxi driver is making because we can see the fare box.
We can see the mandatory reporting based on the mandatory reporting that Uber and Lyft have to provide. That's a really fundamental point that we shouldn't skip over because it is now that we're in the position to judge how much that should be, but so many other cities are suffering. Those workers are suffering because the visibility doesn't even exist, to begin with. This is definitely a long time coming.
I was at the Taxi & Limousine Commission in 2013. For some perspective at that time, there was a raise given to taxi drivers. Medallion owners sued because they wanted an analogous raise in the lease cap, how much they could charge for their medallion. Times have definitely changed because that's not even on the table anymore. The entire raise went to the taxi drivers.
Likewise, the raise that goes to the FHV drivers factors in their increased expenses. That's really the nugget, which is there's increased expenses. Gases cost more, parts because of supply chain cost more, insurance, and the like. Really, in order for these workers to continue to sustain a living, the agency needs to adjust that upward to factor for those real-life expenses. Companies can have a decision on how they absorb those costs.
Sometimes it's passenger fare. Sometimes in large companies, there are other places for them to make savings. It doesn't have to be in passenger fare. The point is we can't put the full cost of inflation and the increased cost of goods and services on drivers as independent contractors and as a core transportation part of how New Yorkers get around without-- especially when they have so little control over the revenue streams.
Brian Lehrer: We love our taxi drivers on this show. I see one or two of you driving right now are listening to me saying this. We know you've been through it, especially those of you who drive yellows. Good to see this raise in my opinion. Meera Joshi, deputy mayor, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Thank you.
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