Brooklyn, NY - Litter Fined Owners Cry

Brooklyn, NY - Hmeowners are talking trash - about Department of Sanitation tickets for sidewalk litter they say isn't theirs.

"What they're doing is trying to pin it on the property owners, but we're not doing the littering," fumed Judd Fischler, 75, a retired Brighton Beach homeowner. "Why are the sanitation police not giving tickets to the perpetrators?"
Fischler has gotten three tickets for litter on the sidewalk since January - which he said comes from kids from nearby schools, the wind and people dumping illegally. "Whatever they're eating, they leave behind."

City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights) will introduce a bill tomorrow that lets homeowners slide with a warning and dismiss the ticket if there are no other problems within 30 days. "It provides freedom from a very annoying and costly fine from the government," said Yassky.

It wasn't the cost of the fine she got for the trash in front of her Carroll Gardens home that made Lana Hoerburger angry.
"It's obviously not our garbage," said Hoerburger of the milk cartons and cafeteria trays that blow in from nearby Public School 32. "It's annoying. I'm cleaning up garbage that isn't even mine, and I get a ticket. This is crazy."
Sanitation officials gave out 142,578 tickets in 2004 for litter on the curbs and street gutters in front of homes and businesses across the city.

And going to court, which can mean missing a day of work, isn't always an option. With a family of eight children, I can't come running to court, said Esther Weiss, 40, whose Williamsburg home was ticketed twice for not sweeping while she was observing a Jewish holiday. So she's trying to fight the ticket by mail.

Sanitation Department officials said the rules are nothing new and wouldn't comment on Yassky's bill.