Joy in Boerum Hill, Red Hook & Other Neighborhoods: Street Cleaning Cut in Half

If you have a car and you live in a Brooklyn neighborhood where each side of the street is cleaned twice a week rather than once a week, here is news that could make you smile: the city is going to cut street cleaning in Community Board Six. The news is in today's Daily News. It means that alternate side regulations twice a week on a street will be cut to once a week. Here's a short copy/paste from the article:

Drivers in Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook are savoring a sweeping victory that will slash unpopular street-cleaning regulations across the area.

"I'm ecstatic," said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6, which has been fighting for the changes for 20 years. "This is probably the longest-running battle we've had with any city agency."

After a Daily News report last month, Sanitation Department officials finally agreed to reduce the frequency of street sweeping on all residential streets in Community Board 6 from four times a week - twice on each side - to two times a week.

The move comes as a growing number of community boards across the city are pushing to get the unpopular street cleaning regulations reduced - especially after Mayor Bloomberg last month announced that streets have reached record levels of cleanliness.

Parts of the area had their street-cleaning service cut in 2000 as part of a pilot program that Sanitation Department officials agreed to after years of lobbying.

The new changes will bring the reduced schedule to the rest of the community board's area.

"I think it's great. It was definitely overkill," said Red Hook activist Lou Sones, who looks forward to having to move his car just twice a week. "It was unnecessary to sweep the streets four times. I don't think this will make the streets any dirtier."

Sanitation officials said yesterday they expect to implement the new regulations "in a matter of months."

New signs have to be installed first.