Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Litterjerks

Like so many other crises we face, the approach to solving our abominable litter problem must be multi-faceted – and multi-generational.  Bad habits die hard, the saying goes, and an adult who has been littering his or her entire life is a tough nut for us to crack.  That littering is an inherently selfish and uncaring act has not sunk in to these folks, so we resort to more stringent measures.

I sometimes wish I could follow behind them after they toss trash, like the Septa who accompanied Cersei Lannister on her infamous walk of contrition, intoning “Shame!  Shame!  Shame!”

Over the years we recognized the need to nip the problem in the proverbial bud, and the way to do that is, not surprisingly, through educating our young people about litter before they ever acquire the habit.  To that end, we partnered with a variety of organizations to bring a curriculum developed by JASON Learning to our schools.

JASON Learning is a nonprofit organization and long-time partner of the National Geographic Society. Founded in 1989 by Dr. Robert D. Ballard, the mission of JASON is to inspire and educate kids everywhere through real science and exploration. They partnered with the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) on a national recycling awareness campaign to help students and educators understand the importance of recycling and the recycling industry.  ISRI represents recyclers that divert more than 100 million tons of materials from landfills each year.

Staten Island Borough Hall, Pratt Industries, JASON, ISRI, GrowNYC, the Department of Education (DOE) and the Sanitation Department (DSNY) have joined in a public private partnership (PPP) to educate students in Staten Island schools with a pro-recycling/anti-litter message.  So far 35 schools (public and parochial), and over 50 staff members, including DOE officials, have received training in the STEM-based recycling and sustainability curriculum.

As you are no doubt aware, since taking office we have been engaged in many efforts to combat the litter problem on Staten Island.  The JASON Learning curriculum resulted from a meeting I had last summer with the folks from Pratt Industries.  At that meeting, they informed me about the ISRI/JASON Learning curriculum, and their ability to secure the necessary resources through Pratt’s membership in ISRI.

DOE and GrowNYC were immediately on board and helped us bring this curriculum, along with the Recycling Champions Program, to these Island schools.  The Recycling Champions Program develops model recycling programs at over 100 NYC public schools each year, educating students, staff, and custodians about recycling. 

Staten Island is one of only three municipalities in the nation that ISRI is supporting for JASON Learning, the others being pilot programs in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Baltimore, Maryland.  This August, ISRI is hosting a Webinar for stakeholders in their organization to discuss our model and our success on Staten Island, and at a recent ISRI Board of Directors meeting in Washington DC, Staten Island was mentioned as the most successful ISRI/Jason program in the country.

Pratt Industries will generously bear the cost and host at their paper mill in Travis the professional development for staff from participating schools. They will also host school tours at their Staten Island facility for participating schools so students can see firsthand how the paper recycling process works.

It is important to note that the paper recycled at Pratt stays right here on Staten Island, where Pratt makes it into new paper and then makes that paper into new boxes, predominantly pizza boxes used by many of our pizzerias.  Pratt has also donated recycling bins that have been placed in participating schools.

So this is an important part of our holistic approach to battling the bane of litter.  We will continue to engage the public with aggressive and edgy awareness campaigns, send our Clean Team out wherever and whenever we can, encourage residents and businesses to join in the cleanup, remind businesses and homeowners about their legal responsibilities to keep the area around their property clean, and educate our young people.

Perhaps, someday in the not-so-distant future, through educating our younger generation, we can eliminate the need for litter “walks of shame” entirely. 

Perhaps.  Someday

They Heed No Counsel But Their Own

I leave it to you to agree or disagree with a recent Staten Island Advance editorial entitled, “Mount Manresa: It’s time to move on.”  You can read that piece here.

Whether or not you think “it’s time to move on,” the editorial included a sentence I cannot allow to go unchallenged. I have heard it before and it’s often repeated, but that doesn’t make it true; indeed, it is as false today as it was the first time it was uttered: “A real downzoning effort was never mounted.”

This is simply not accurate.  A truer observation would have been: “No downzoning effort was ever allowed to be mounted,” or “City Planning, the agency in charge of such land use matters, refused to allow any downzoning effort.”   Or my personal favorite, the one that most accurately reflects what actually happened: "In 2010, an attempt by then-Councilman Jim Oddo to have the property considered for a downzoning was summarily rejected by the agency."

And while I’m at it, let the record reflect that Mt. Manresa was NOT in my Council District.  We attempted to address it because we foresaw the havoc that would be wreaked upon the community if it fell into the wrong hands.  And so it did, and our worst fears were realized.

But as important as the Manresa issue has been and continues to be, a broader, subtler, yet more far-reaching  concern is stirred up by the errant line in the editorial.  That one misleading sentence amplifies, underscores and hardens the misconception held by every day Staten Islanders that most or all of these decisions – decisions which impact our daily lives in so many ways -- are made by, or directly determined by, Staten Island’s local elected officials.

If only we had such power!  

We do not, and that is not the result of any dereliction of duty or lack of focus.  Rather, it is a direct consequence of the form of government imposed upon New Yorkers via charter revision in 1989, which came in wake of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling that the Board of Estimate violated one person, one vote and was therefore unconstitutional.  Those charged with the responsibility of picking a new city government structure chose what’s known as a “Strong Mayor“ model.  Simply put, the Mayor runs his agencies as he sees fit, and they have an outsized role in the decisions that impact our lives.

Agencies typically make decisions that reflect the will, ideology, agenda, and priorities of their commissioners and the Mayor, an historically anti-outer-borough dynamic.  Compounding the problem is a host of life-long agency civil servants who have long-since morphed into bureaucrats.  No matter our approach, they heed no counsel but their own; they have lost all sense of urgency and no longer concern themselves with the implications of their actions -- or inactions, as the case may be.

As a result of this governmental model, we have essentially forfeited local decision-making on many fronts -- directly impacting our quality of life.

My problem with the falsehood in the editorial is that it implies that by working harder, or perhaps simply by fiat, a local elected official might have overcome this decision-making bureaucracy and began a rezoning of the Manresa property.

That is simply incorrect, and gives readers a decidedly cynical – though incorrect – view of their local elected officials and what they may accomplish.  Yet, despite this rigged system and against long odds, we do sometimes win these fights, maybe even more often than we should.  In fact, sometimes we win rather high stakes fights, like successfully pushing back against the waste-to-energy plant idea at Fresh Kills floated by the Bloomberg Administration late in their final term.  But that, like the other battles we have won, was the result of figuring out a way to change the hearts and minds of the people with the power – not using some inherent charter mandated abilities of our local offices.

Frequently, our best efforts and most cogent arguments fall on deaf ears, and the public perception is that their local elected official is not delivering.  Over a long period of time I have grudgingly come to accept that many Staten Islanders do not know or care about the actual, real-life decision-making process.  While this is likely the case, it does not negate the fundamental point that a more informed populace provides Staten Island with an improved chance at winning future fights with city government.

Mistakes like the one in the editorial unwittingly and unintentionally undercut what should be our shared goal.  

Now let me get to the most important point: we will continue our ongoing efforts to encourage more Islanders to achieve a basic understanding of the players and the processes of city government.  Then, and ONLY then, do we have a fighting chance of changing, and/or impacting, this decision-making paradigm.

We created a portal on our StatenIslandUSA.com website that allows you to see everyone who works on our Borough Hall team, including their titles, responsibilities and ways to reach them.  Just as importantly, if not more so, we also created a “transparency” page identifying local officials from the various agencies which impact our lives.  Let’s be clear – most of these folks are often our allies and serve as our partners to effect changes in those agency decisions which we bemoan or simply do not understand.  You can contact them at your will; here’s a link to a list of local agency personnel with whom we deal on a regular basis.

We think it’s great that you continue to communicate with us, and we encourage and facilitate that accessibility through our aggressive social media platforms.  But we also think you should know and discuss these issues with the individuals that are at the heart of the decision-making process.  Let’s start pushing harder for that grass roots, bottom up, local control decision-making that Staten lslanders have so longed for.

“A real down zoning effort was never mounted.”  Let’s educate ourselves and enlighten each other so that we, collectively, might ensure a better, more responsive system, and that an erroneous line like this is never written again.  Each and every one of you can be a force multiplier in our battle against an entrenched bureaucracy.

 I look forward to having you fighting by my side. 

Traffic Light Out? Treat it as Four Way Stop Sign

High temperatures are great for spending long, lazy days at the shore, but they also make summer the season of occasional power failures.  A potentially dangerous side effect of these glitches involves traffic signals – more specifically, the penchant for some drivers to run right through the non-working signal.  I can’t for the life of me understand how one can treat NO light as a GREEN light.

It was during the infamous blackout of 2003, which took out large chunks of the northeast power grid, that I became fully aware of the depth of the problem.  I had been taught since I first got a learner’s permit that in such situations the most logical course of action was to treat the intersection as if it were a four-way stop.  It’s only common sense, isn’t it?  Well, let me be kind by simply saying that some see it differently.  Driving for hours around my Council District that night was an eye-opening -- and frightening -- experience.

After some research, I was a bit surprised that the “four-way stop” rule was not, in fact, a rule at all, and no law governed the way motorists should handle such situations.  It was merely a custom, and while it was customary to me, to many others it was not.

I contacted then-Assemblyman John Lavelle and explained my experiences on the night of the blackout, and shortly thereafter he introduced legislation to close the loophole.  In due time, the law passed both the state assembly and senate, and on November 1, 2004 it went into effect.

So, for those of you who are not sure, or may have forgotten, how to treat a broken or unpowered signal, now you know.  Approach the non-working light exactly as if it were a stop sign, and if everyone does the same, the intersection will behave just as does a four-way stop.  Under NO circumstances should you treat a non-working signal as if it gives you right-of-way, even if you are on a major primary street like Hylan Boulevard.

By the way, John Lavelle was the chairman of the Democratic Party at the time, which serves as just another example of how when it comes to the safety and betterment of Staten Island residents, working across the aisle is the rule of the day, and partisanship takes a back seat to common sense.

Adopt a dog or cat this summer!

The long-awaited $7 million renovation of the Staten Island Animal Adoption Center in Charleston is actively underway. The Center remains open throughout construction. In 2015 alone, the Staten Island Center took in 2,765 cats and dogs and 356 other animals.

The Animal Adoption Center is an important part of Staten Island’s animal rescue network. It is Staten Island’s only facility under the aegis of Animal Care & Control of New York City, which is contracted through the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to provide animal care services for the City.

The renovation will improve natural light conditions and climate control for the animals and staff, and expand work and shelter space.

Cats and dogs are vaccinated upon arrival at ACC. In addition to vaccinations, 907 cats and 158 dogs were spayed/ neutered at the Staten Island Center. Once the animals are cleared medically, they are put up for adoption. 660 animals were adopted from the Staten Island Center during 2015 and 1,996 animals from the Staten Island Center were placed with New Hope partners. Besides adoptions, the ACC helped return 103 lost dogs and 25 cats to their owners throughout last year. Staten Island ACC Admissions Counselors also helped prevent 64 cats and 43 dogs from being surrendered by helping guardians keep their pets. Staten Island ACC volunteers logged 1600 hours with 49 active volunteers at the Staten Island center.

For hours of operation click here.