The Participatory Budgeting Project's Public Safety, Public Health, and Sanitation Committee has met and posted its first report. The committee consolidated the suggestions made at the neighborhood assemblies in October to produce a list of eight items to spend $1,000,000 in capital funding on.
Public safety is always a concern, but the large number of sexual assaults this year on women in our neighborhood guaranteed it the top three spots on the list. "Street lighting" included lighting inside of, outside of, and near subway stations when it was suggested at the neighborhood assemblies.
The next three items deal with the worsening problem of garbage on sidewalks and in the streets. The number of public litter baskets has been decreasing lately as part of a Sanitation Department experiment. The department believes that merchants will be forced to stop illegally putting their business garbage in the baskets and residents will be forced to stop illegally doing that with their household garbage because there won't be room in the baskets. So far, however, fewer baskets has instead led to that garbage being placed on the ground next to the baskets.
- Street lighting
- Blue safety phones
- Security cameras
- Solar trash cans (and more trash cans in general)
- Permanent E-waste receptacles
- Permanent recycling receptacles
- Snow plows for narrow streets
- Capital project related to mosquito control (if this is possible!)
