SORRY POL, YOUR INVITE IS TRASHED
Councilman who didn’t back Adams in veto fight is told not to come to press event on new garbage bins Containerization is set for uptown nabe in new way to pick up rubbish
Manhattan Councilman Shaun Abreu was told not to attend a Thursday press conference where Mayor Adams unveiled a new trash collection program for his district — a move that came after Abreu refused to help City Hall disrupt the Council’s override of the mayor’s veto of the “How Many Stops” bill earlier this week, the Daily News has learned.
Multiple sources directly familiar with the matter said Abreu has for weeks been in touch with Adams’ administration about participating in the press conference in SoHo, where the mayor announced Manhattan’s Community Board 9 will become the city’s first district where containerization of all household trash is going to be mandated by fall 2025.
Asked at the press conference why Abreu wasn’t there, Adams called him “a real partner,” but added: “We decide who we’re bringing, who we aren’t.”
Abreu’s Washington Heights-based district covers all of Community Board 9. He’s also the chairman of the Council’s
Sanitation Committee, which oversees the Sanitation Department, and has participated in three press conferences with Adams in the past six months focused on containerization, a sanitation model that aims to keep trash off sidewalks to help mitigate rats.
But late Wednesday afternoon, Adams administration officials informed Abreu he wasn’t invited to Thursday’s press conference, the sources told The News.
One of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Abreu was told the decision not to invite him is “coming from CLA.” That was a reference to the Mayor’s Office of City Legislative Affairs, which has over the past few months led Adams’ advocacy charge against the How Many Stops Act, a Council bill that will require NYPD officers to document basic information, like race, age and gender, about all civilians they have investigative encounters with.
Adams vetoed the bill earlier this month, arguing it will place too heavy of a bureaucratic burden on cops that’d distract from more pressing police work. However, 42 Council Democrats, including Abreu, voted to override the mayor’s veto Tuesday, contending the increased transparency requirements are needed to prevent abusive policing.
In a previously unknown wrinkle, City Hall privately asked Abreu to openly criticize the How Many Stops Act on the Council floor before the override vote and introduce an amendment that would’ve modified the bill, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said. Abreu rebuffed the request and didn’t offer any remarks on the floor before voting in support of the override with most of his Democratic colleagues, forcing the bill into law over the mayor’s objection after weeks of tense feuding between the two sides, the source said.
In a statement to The News, Abreu didn’t address the question of whether he was invited to Thursday’s news conference, but stressed that the push for trash containerization in the city has been a joint effort.
“Nobody in government can accomplish anything alone — whether you’re a Council member, an agency head, or a mayor,” Abreu said. “We’ve worked really hard alongside the Department of Sanitation over the last year to make containerization a reality — hosting trash tours, holding community events, working with school leaders, gathering feedback from residents — and we couldn’t be more proud to see those efforts turn into reality.”
Adams spokesman Charles Lutvak said “City Hall develops lists of invites for events with the mayor,” that “no elected officials” on it “were disinvited from today’s event” and that “any suggestion otherwise is inaccurate.”
Lutvak wouldn’t comment specifically on Abreu’s situation, which sources say involved him speaking to administration officials directly about attending Thursday’s event.
Text message exchanges obtained by The News confirm Adams administration officials and Abreu discussed planning related to the containerization press conference as recently as Wednesday morning.
The only elected official who ended up attending the event was Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, a key Adams ally in Albany who represents a Queens district where there are currently no containerization programs in operation.
An uptown Manhattan community board district is set to become the first in the city where trash containerization will be universally mandated under a plan rolled out by Mayor Adams on Thursday.
Under current rules, most household and commercial trash is left on curbs for pickup by the Sanitation Department. But sanitation advocates have long pushed for ending the messy sidewalk system in favor of a containerization model, which is used in many other parts of the world and requires that trash be placed in rodent-sealed containers for pickup.
Adams has previously implemented containerization pilot programs in some neighborhoods in the city. On Thursday morning, he announced he’s taking it a step further by making Manhattan’s Community Board 9 — which spans West Harlem, Morningside Heights, Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights — the first CB district in the city where the bin-based model will be mandated.
“That will include the use of stationary, on-street containers, like those you might see in a European or in Asian cities. They should not be ahead of us — we need to lead from the front,” the mayor said at a press conference outside the Sanitation Department’s main garage on Manhattan’s west side.
Advocates have called on Adams to make containerization universal across the entire city, arguing it’ll help with eradicating rats and clear up space for pedestrians on sidewalks. While he has voiced support for the concept, the mayor hasn’t laid out a timeline for when universal containerization could be achieved.
The latest announcement comes after Adams in October unveiled a plan that’ll require landlords of all residential buildings with nine or fewer units to containerize their tenants’ trash. That plan is supposed to take effect this fall.
Installation of Sanitation Department-certified containers will start in spring 2025 across CB9. If all goes according to plan, mandatory containerization in the CB will then take effect in late 2025, according to an internal advisory obtained by the Daily News.
CB9 is already participating in a 10-block containerization pilot, which appears to have helped with driving down rat complaints in the area, according to City Hall data. Since taking over the reins at City Hall, killing rodents has been a big focus for Adams, who as Brooklyn borough president showcased a macabre rat trap that plunges the four-legged creatures into a vat of toxic goo.
Adams and Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the administration’s able to expand the pilot to the entire district because the Sanitation Department solidified purchases quicker than expected of automated, side-loading garbage trucks required for collecting trash from containerization bins. Tisch and Adams oversaw a demonstration of one of the behemoth vehicles emptying a bin during Thursday’s press conference.
“We have a new super weapon in the fight against filth,” Tisch said of the trucks.
Adams has made sanitation one of his key focuses since taking office in January 2022.
The Sanitation Department was among just a handful of agencies that Adams spared from steep budget cuts announced in November.
In a letter to agency heads at the time, Jacques Jiha, Adams’ budget director, wrote that the mayor decided to exempt the Sanitation Department from the belt-tightening “out of concern that additional budget cuts at this time” could impact “cleanliness.”