Friday, October 23, 2009

City refuses to clean its own property

"After calling 311 to have graffiti removed from various street lamps, it was stated that currently there is no contract to remove any graffiti from street lamps by the DOT. Inquiring further, I was told that the City of New York will not remove the graffiti since the property falls under DOT. If I try and remove the graffiti myself, it is considered private property and against the law.

It makes absolutely no sense that:

1) DOT is not responsible for their own property (because it is not stipulated under contract guidelines)

2) That the City of New York will not get involved in graffiti cleanup because the property falls under DOT

3) That citizens themselves are not allowed to remove it without breaking the law.

On July 12, 2004, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed Local Law 36 amending the requirements for newsracks (Section 19-128.1 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York). This legislation amends Local Law 23 of 2002, which established a framework to allow the Department of Transportation (DOT) to regulate the maintenance and placement of newsracks throughout the City, while permitting the use of public space for the dissemination of written material.

Why is it that graffiti on a newsrack is more important then the overall appearance of street lamps?" - Neighborhood Cleanup Initiative

Photo by SReed99342 on Flickr

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

F the graffiti,25% of all the lights in streets and highways are out.FIX THEM!

Criminal said...

I bought some gray spray paint and repainted ours in the night.

Anonymous said...

Please. No one is going to arrest anybody for cleaning up graffiti. Sounds like an excuse for not giving a damn about your community. "I can't clean it up, because it's against the law..." Yeah. Keep believing that.

Anonymous said...

The money needs to be spent on city planning for those million people.

Since the city preservation community, now comprised of 3rd stringers ready to cut deals for ice cream money, will do nothing, well, nothing will happen.

Besides, when a developer comes in, you get NEW light poles, sidewalks, trees, etc.

Anonymous said...

because Newsracks are revenue generators. taxes and fees, taxes and fees.


Light poles do nothing but cost money.

Anonymous said...

have you tried calling your local community board or going to the meetings?

Anonymous said...

Good people should be allowed to remove ugly grafitti from our neighborhoods. Why is it on the books that we can't? And yet we are partially responsible for trees from what I have read here somewhere. Let us do it all as far as I am concerned. Grafitti looks awful anywhere and it is a sure sign to people that things are going downhill in an area. We need to keep things clean..Wish I could help but it is against the law.

Anonymous said...

We spray paint over the graffiti on the lampposts and pull down the signs on them in our neighborhood. Been doing it for ten years and all we get is thank you. In fact I have an award for doing it.

So please do not use "It's against the law" as an excuse to do nothing. As our President just said "Pick up a mop" (I've been saying for years "shovel").