Workers from DCR, who put down a string of boulders across one of the few remaining parking lots in Stony Brook Reservation on Friday will remove them today - and pick up the trash that led them to put them there - state Rep. Rob Consalvo (14th Suffolk) says, adding that ISD will join the trash picker uppers to see if they can identify who dumped the trash and possibly fine them. Read more.
A disgusted citizen files a 311 complaint to demand the city replace the pink trash barrel of Prince Street, and not just because now there's trash all over the street: Read more.
North End still life.
One outraged citizen pounds out a 311 complaint about conditions in the North End today: Read more.
The Bulletin reports on efforts by Hyde Park officials to clean up the neighborhood. At a meeting earlier this week, officials said that no matter what they do, the neighborhood is at a disadvantage because it's surrounded by suburbanites who use the city as their dumping ground - including a Milton pre-school that was dumping all its trash in the neighborhood.
This is not a new complaint.
City Councilor Matt O'Malley (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury) says clean business districts are better and even safer business districts and wants to look at increasing fines on "chronic" litterers.
At a City Council meeting today, O'Malley said Boston's maximum littering fines are only $25, compared to $300 in New York and $1,500 in Chicago.
O'Malley also wants to look at expanding the city "hokey" program, in which workers with trash bins on wheels go around business districts cleaning up and introducing new technolgy, such as the sort of "binless bins" the T uses for recycling newspapers.
NorthEndWaterfront.com reports several state reps are shepherding an "emergency" bill that would, immediately on passage, let Boston and other communities ban overnight commercial trash pickups. Legislators consider the ide at a hearing on Oct. 18 at the State House, Room A-1, starting at 10 a.m.
Two city councilors are working on proposals that could prohibit 3 a.m. commercial trash pickups in neighborhoods like the North End and limit the number of companies allowed to pick up trash there at all.
A fed-up South End citizen grouses:
Every trash day a small Asian woman comes out and rips open trash bags to find cans!! She makes a mess and the trash guys can't clean it all up, it's disgusting.
It may sound counter-intuitive to those of us with just one pickup a week, but Ross Levanto explains how cutting the neighborhood's weekly trash pickups from three to two would make the place less trashy:
Matt Conti reports a proposal that would have limited North End residents to 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for putting out trash died because the city and the contractor couldn't work out the union and contract changes that would have required. Councilor Sal LaMattina initially proposed the idea as a way of reducing the hours during which rats can gorge themselves silly on neighborhood garbage - residents can now put their trash out as early as 5 p.m. the night before each of the neighborhood's three-times-a-week pickups.
Adam Balsam walked across the North End tonight and photographed and noted every last bag of trash illegally put out too early:
... As someone who has fought the North End rodent problem first-hand and who is disgusted by the litter on Foster Street (among others), I understand the need for strict trash codes. But why bother having them if they are simply ignored? And chatter about random blatant violations doesn't mean it's being addressed. It looks to me like 100% non-compliance with next to zero repercussions. ...
This past Saturday I volunteered as part of Boston Shines and the Beacon Hill neighborhood cleanup. The City of Boston posted signs on some of the Hill's dirties streets, including Phillips, Anderson, Irving and Garden, to ask cars to move the day of the cleanup.
Many owners moved their cars, though I imagine more out of fear that they would be towed. Whatever the reason, this allowed a street cleaner to get to the curb on those streets. I must say, it's amazing how well the street cleaner can do when it can reach the curb.
Jenn Martinelli is sick of the Beacon Hill Civic Association and its bright green posters telling people not to put the trash out the night before when, as far as she can tell, there's no such city ordinance to that effect.
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