Garbage in Jamaica symbolic of bigger problems

Another Saturday morning walk to Blink Gym revealed the true “Jamaica Revealed”. Of course “Jamaica Revealed” refers to the event held several weeks ago about bringing potential businesses to the downtown area, which I am all for, but how about cleaning up the damn house first folks. This garbage problem in Jamaica is atrocious. How atrocious? Well my walk back from Blink Gym revealed a major eyesore along the Colosseum Mall Stores on 165th between Jamaica Ave and 89th St. (and this was not early in the morning either). One particular eyesore, which looks like it has been in the making for a while, is pretty amazing considering this is right in the downtown area and part of the 164th Street Mall Association. Someone is not doing their job.

This is right near 89-41 165th Street. I have seen this for a while and wondered how long before anyone said anything. Well I am still waiting.

And the beat goes on…..

……and on and on.

Empty lot next to Homecare Supplies at 168-30 89th Ave. How much garbage and rodents are hidden in these high weeds?

In front of house at 89-16 172nd St.

Problematic lot at 170-19 89th Ave.

And all of this is supposed to draw quality businesses in our area? All it draws in are low-class ghetto trash and low-class third world immigrant trash and the crap that goes along with it.

How bad is our Jamaica garbage problem, well at 112th Precinct Community Council meeting last Thursday, which  covers Forest Hills/Kew Gardens, City Council candidate Jon Torodash, who I know, had this exchange with Claudia Filomena, the Queens director for the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit, which the Queens Chronicle covered (http://www.qchron.com/editions/central/trying-to-improve-neighborhood-streets/article_08f05777-caf5-5ba1-b4fb-072e9c7eaf0f.html):

City Council candidate Jon Torodash brought up his own concerns.

“Jamaica has a tremendous trash problem and it has since been growing along Queens Boulevard and there have been individuals who have been documenting it,” he said. “It’s happened on DOT properties, residential properties, and no one is coming out there and no fines have been issued.”

Filomena explained that in certain situations, such as a vacant lot, the Department of Sanitation can clean up the property.

“But in Queens you have a lot of buildings that have just been abandoned and we try to do as much as we can,” she said. “Because you have a lot of absentee landowners and property owners in the area, it makes it difficult. We can bill them, but at the end of the day, they can choose to ignore the fines. Unfortunately it’s kind of just a Band-Aid. We can also reach out to the banks that own those properties but many of them are out of state and don’t always come up with the best solutions either.”

“It is obvious that Manhattan and certain areas of Brooklyn and Queens are better maintained than others, and it’s simply not right,” Torodash wrote in an email after the meeting. “Although Jamaica is not technically ‘in my district,’ it is a hop, skip and a jump from the subways and buses. The slow incursion of graffiti and trash buildup into any area is a troubling indicator of neighborhood decline, correlating with increased crime and lowered property value. We don’t want the problem to creep in: It should be aggressively pursued."

"It’s downright nasty the way some of these streets look,” Gretta Harison said. “Some people probably say they’re used to it, but that’s not a good thing. We shouldn’t be used to trash all over the place and last time I checked, Queens was part of the city that Bloomberg represents. It seems like he forgets that sometimes.”

“There are areas in Manhattan that have trash and graffiti as well,” Felomina said at the meeting. “We want to help property owners and residents keep their neighborhoods clean and I know that in the Jamaica area there are a lot of issues with trash but there is only so much that we can legally do. We encourage anyone who sees trash or graffiti to call it in.”

Torodash was not satisfied.

“It amazes me how Queens Borough Hall can be strewn with trash, a broken handrail, peeling paint on its flagpole and unwashed graffiti for months (on the tarp over Civic Virtue’s former site) but still the city could muster $100,000 to pay for yanking the Civic Virtue statue away from City Hall and come up with $20 million for a glass atrium where healthy cherry trees once stood,” Torodash wrote. “It’s really not that complicated: Inspectors must seriously ramp up their issuing of citations and pass enforcement up the chain of command quickly to deal with the repeat and serious offenders who flout the law.”

Jon took the words right  out of my mouth.

Pretty fucking bad, when someone running for city council, not in our community and does not live in our community, is more concerned than our own elected officials who are pretty much non-existent on this issue. Where the fuck are your concerns Cook, Wills, Meeks, Scarborough, even you Mr. Comrie?

And sure just as I predicted earlier, we heard from Wills, Meeks and even disgraced Malcolm Smith in regards to violence and guns in conjunction with the horrific killing of 14-year-old D’aja Robinson by some punk ass gang member, who needs to have a bounty on his head “DEAD OR NOT ALIVE”. They were saying the usual empty bullshit that politicians like to say during these times (“This is a tragedy”, “We have to get the guns out of our community”). But words mean nothing, action means everything and none of you have really done anything on this issue. Why wait for a change in Washington, take care of matters in your own back yard and stop these young punks from running wild in our garbage strewn community. It is not like this is the first time,  this has been going on for years and as usual, to take the words of Stevie Wonder, “You haven’t done nothing”. Hell you clowns cannot even take care of the garbage problem. You are just media whores, looking for an opportunity to put yourself in the spotlight. Nothing but hollow bullshit.

You just don’t get the correlation between garbage run-down communities and crime. They go hand in hand FOOLS!

Joe Moretti
http://cleanupjamaicaqueens.wordpress.com/