The West 87th Street Park & Garden, which was vandalized with graffiti multiple times earlier this year.
In a recent email to her constituents, Council Member Gale Brewer announced a recent survey her staff conducted finding “370 significant pieces of graffiti, one on nearly every block” from West 54th to 109th streets and between Riverside Drive and Central Park West.
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She wrote this letter to six separate city agencies to address the issue, citing how “Multiple instances of graffiti were reported on nearly every block, mainly along avenues such as Broadway and their surrounding streets.” One example she gave was 88th and Amsterdam Avenue, where “five shuttered and boarded up buildings (200 West 88 Street along with 568, 570, 572, and 574 Amsterdam Avenue) … are covered in graffiti”
Brewer’s office also created this graffiti map to display the breadth of the issue.
“It is my understanding that the responsibility to remove graffiti does not lie entirely on one agency, but that the location of the graffiti determines which agency is responsible for its removal,” Brewer concluded. “For that reason, I request all agencies review the data and arrange for removal under your respective jurisdictions.”
The agencies addressed were the Departments of Sanitation and Transportation, the New York City Housing Authority, New York City Transit, the Fire Department, and the United States Postal Service’s Manhattan Postmaster.
Brewer argued in her letter that graffiti “degrades the quality of life” and “makes the neighborhoods appear unsafe and neglected,” also adding that it can “affect property values” and “deter customers from shopping at businesses that have been serving our community for years.”
After publishing this article, Department of Sanitation Press Secretary Vincent Gragnani reached out to ILTUWS saying they had issued the following response to Brewer’s letter:
“After years of being plagued by backlogs, the City’s graffiti removal program is now being managed by the Department of Sanitation.
“Since taking over the program in April, we have closed more than 5,000 graffiti service requests, an 85 percent increase from the same period last year.
“As you can see, we are aggressively working through this backlog at an accelerated pace, as well as on the 1,000 new service requests we receive per month.
“We appreciate the Council Member’s advocacy for clean streetscapes and look forward to continuing this work on the Upper West Side and across the five boroughs.”
Really? GB has the idea that city agencies work together?
“It is my understanding that the responsibility to remove graffiti does not lie entirely on one agency, but that the location of the graffiti determines which agency is responsible for its removal,” Brewer concluded. “For that reason, I request all agencies review the data and arrange for removal under your respective jurisdictions.”
As if the people who work for the city are going to care at all and actually pick up the phone and speak with other agencies?
This is like trying to get the city council to actually be effective and pass legislature that improves the quality of life!
And still nothing serious about the actually dangerous e-scooters and throttle e-bikes.
Pretty hard for graffiti to hit me at 15MPH on a dark sidewalk, but that nearly happened to me early in the month.
Thank you. Please address real problems. Scooters, ebikes, migrant crisis, homeless, shoplifting. Please wake up GB and all other NYC politicians.
Agreed this is make and mirrors. This woman is incompetent to her constituents. Please focus on real issues we have major real issues here! Not this
Oh I guess there must not be any real problems for her to work on. Not one.
Yeah, that’s the real problem up here GB.
Gail Brewer should address the homeless who are living on the streets and the very aggressive panhandlers. As importantly she and the police should deal with the motorized bikes and delivery services that are terrorizing pedestrians !!!!!!!
1) there is a different btw street art and graffiti.
2) Heard her on tv say that if they paint over the graffiti right away it will detract from new graffiti …. I don’t think so.. all it does is give them a new and clean place to show off their work.
Smoke and mirrors