Over-the-top mailer fails to mention overflowing garbage

From the Daily News:

Look, up in the sky — is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s Vallone-man!

City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. touts himself as a bona-fide superhero in a new campaign mailing that Queens residents received this week — complete with Vallone donning a Man of Steel-style unitard with a bright red “V” on the chest.

“Police respect him, criminals fear him,” the flyer says at the top, next to an action shot of Vallone grasping an American flag. There’s also a tribute to Vallone from Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly — in a comic book font, of course.

Wow, this almost convinced me to pull the lever for the Junior! But then I received this:

"I put in a complaint about the amount of trash on Broadway on weekends and the poor removal by Sanitation. Plus, a few of those restaurant owners and landlords are slobs - treating the trees as ashtrays and dumping grounds. I will also blame careless, dirty pedestrians who seem too weak to hold onto a cup to toss in a garbage can.

Well, here is the response I got from Vallone - "basically I tried to fend off budget cuts but in the meantime here is how you can set-up a volunteer clean-up using materials from Dept of Sanitation." Not bad, but when do I have time to organize this when I am working and attending to family matters?

Maybe they should add a surcharge to developers building oversized buildings to pay for additional sanitation services for the whole community."

Chris Sahar

Thank you for writing in regard to sanitation issues and I will forward your concerns to the Department of Sanitation. Below are two links for citizens to be active in cleaning up trash in their neighborhood:

http://www.citizensnyc.org/programs/grants.html
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dsny/downloads/pdf/contact/requests/misc_request/volcleanup.pdf

Keeping Astoria clean is a top priority, and I refuse to let the quality of life fall below acceptable standards. I am as upset as you are about the recent increase in litter, not just in Astoria, but City-wide.

These quality of life issues are a direct result of cutbacks forced on New York City by politicians in Albany. Two years ago our local sanitation district had 141 officers and because of attrition and hiring freezes, our sanitation district stands at 119 officers. Budget cuts have lowered public trash can collections from twice a day in 2008 to once a day in 2010. I recently wrote to the Commissioner of Sanitation asking for restoration of twice a day public trash can collection.

Keeping Astoria clean is a high concern of mine and I have negotiated in the City Council to get funding in the budget to have well over one hundred heavy duty trash cans placed at various locations throughout my district in heavily trafficked areas. I also allocate money in the budget each year to pay for a sweeper who cleans 31st Street from 20th Avenue to 23rd Avenue and Ditmars Boulevard from 29th Street to 33rd Street each day and have provided funding to other groups to hire sweepers. A few years ago, I successfully fought to save twice weekly garbage pickups, weekly recycling, and to rehire 200 fired sanitation workers.

Property owners are responsible for keeping their sidewalks and curbs clean and free of debris. I, along with my colleagues, passed legislation that allowed for Sanitation Agents to issue summonses to homeowners for dirty sidewalk and curb areas only during two 1-hour periods. The time slots are from 8:00 to 9:00 in the morning and again from 6:00 to 7:00 in the evening. These time slots allow for the majority of homeowners to be home to clean their sidewalks. Commercial establishments are also required to sweep in front of their stores. From 31st Street to 81st Street on Ditmars Boulevard, the routing times are 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., and from 31st Street to Shore Boulevard, the times are 11:00 a.m. to 12 Noon and 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts there are dirtbags in our society who have little respect for other people’s property and just throw wrappers and other debris on the sidewalk.

I am sure that with continuous effort, our vision to maintain a cleaner, safer neighborhood will be successful, despite the cuts which Albany has forced upon the city.

Again, thank you for taking the time to express your concerns.
Very Truly Yours,

PETER F. VALLONE, JR.

All that fluff stuff that the superhero did with regard to sanitation and the neighborhood still looks like a pigsty. It's so bad there that one of the candidates running for Vallone's current seat has focused on the filth as his number one concern for the district.