Audit digs up dirt on the city’s street crud

Most of New York City’s sidewalks and streets are filthy, a damning new state audit found.

Auditors from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office inspected a sample of 271 “blockfaces” — one side of a city block corner, including the street and sidewalk.

“We determined 189 streets and 159 sidewalks were dirty based on [the Department of Sanitation’s] Operations Scorecard criteria,” the audit covering fiscal year 2015 to 2019 found. That’s about twothirds of the streets sampled and a majority of sidewalks.

The filthy findings were consistent across the city:

Brooklyn: Of the 62 blocks inspected, 44 had dirty streets and 39 dirty sidewalks

Queens: Of 61 inspected, 47 had filthy streets and 40 dirty sidewalks.

Manhattan: Of 50 blocks inspected, 34 had dirty streets and 27 dirty sidewalks.

The Bronx: Of 50 blocks inspected, 34 had filthy streets and 28 filthy sidewalks

Staten Island: Of 53 blocks inspected, 34 had dirty streets and 28 dirty sidewalks.

The city’s streets were deemed filthy before the COVID-19 lockdown that began in March, and also before Mayor de Blasio slashed more than $21 million for litter basket pickup from the Sanitation Department’s

budget amid the fiscal crisis fueled by the pandemic, reducing service from seven to three days a week. Rat sightings ballooned from under 1,000 in April to over 1,600 in June.

The audit took place when Kathryn Garcia was sanitation commissioner and specifically faulted her department’s oversight. Garcia recently stepped down and is considering running for mayor next year.

“Weaknesses in key managerial controls, including communication, coordination of efforts, and record keeping impede DSNY’s ability to effectively and efficiently address ongoing cleanliness problems on NYC streets and sidewalks,” the audit said. “DSNY officials did not analyze readily available data such as NYC 311 service requests or even its own monitoring records to identify problem areas.”

The Sanitation Department also does not monitor the daily performance of its street cleaning staff, the auditors said.

“We acknowledge that there is always more to do and opportunity for improvement. But at the time this audit was conducted, New York City was cleaner than ever before,” Garcia said in a response letter sent to DiNapoli last month. “This was true despite record high population, employment, tourism and economic activity.”

She said the agency she ran can’t be blamed for property owners who fail to clean the sidewalks.

Weaknesses in key managerial controls . . . impede DSNY’s ability to effectively . . . address ongoing cleanliness problems.

Findings of audit by office of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli

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