The twice-a-week per side schedule for street cleaning throughout Ridgewood is excessive. Locating parking is more difficult with the reduction of spots, increased restrictions, and greater number of cars. For over 2 years, the frequency of street-cleaning was reduced to once-a-week per side of the street and it was more than enough to maintain the cleanliness of said street. This adversely affects everyone in New York City, really, but for the purposes of this petition, I’m focusing on the district(s) I am in on behalf of myself and fellow constituents, where we have voting power and can direct this appropriately. 

The majority of these streets are residential, there is no excess of food or rubbish being left on the street. With the increased frequency of street cleaning, there’s no discernible cleanliness increase as a result. 

After months of doing no street cleaning at all in 2020, during this time residential streets remained clean in the district. The mayor switched to a once-day-a-week per street side schedule after several months and the streets were perfectly clean. Many districts in Queens have no street cleaning, or they already only have once a week, per side, and they all fare really well. 

Parking in this city is already difficult enough. There are so many No Standing, No Stopping, No Parking, etc, zones, in addition to hydrants, bus stops, weirdly shaped intersections, driveways, bicycle terminals, etc. Requiring civilians to move their cars this frequently, just to avoid getting a ticket, is excessive and a massive inconvenience, with no real world benefit. In addition to this, the parking violation implication seems to be the real culprit. This is a revenue-stream for the city and it is abusive to civilians. 

I agree that it’s good to clean the streets from time-to-time, but twice-a-week per side is unnecessary and cruel. On most days I see motorists sitting in their car just waiting for the cleaning vehicle to pass by so they may reserve their spot until the parking period ends. This change would elevate the overall quality of life, as well as cease the first of financial penalties being unable to find a spot or move one’s car several times a week. Being that a fair amount of the borough (and the district) already only cleans once a week per side, this benefit should be extended to all residential streets. Again, we did it for years, literally, years. Returning to the more reasonable schedule is an easy transition and more importantly, it’s what we (the constituents) want.