Editorial L.A. Needs A Smarter Street-Cleaning Program Now [City "Doesn't Have To Be Trashy"]

LATimes ^ | December 07, 2013 | Editorial Board

[Steelfish]

Editorial L.A. Needs A Smarter Street-Cleaning Program Now

By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

Los Angeles may be gritty but it doesn't have to be trashy. The city needs a new street-cleaning program

Los Angeles has a trash problem. Streets, alleys and vacant lots are so littered with debris and garbage that a recent internal city report warned that some neighborhoods look unsafe and ungoverned. Only one-third of city streets are regularly swept. There's a backlog of 400 abandoned waste sites — trash-filled lots and the like — that need to be cleared. And until very recently, there's been no almost no enforcement of illegal dumping laws. There are few city services more basic than cleaning the streets, and L.A. needs to develop a comprehensive system for making sure it gets done.

Curbside waste and illegal dumping are long-standing issues in L.A., but they got worse after the recession and the city budget crunch. The city used to spend $12 million a year to remove abandoned waste, but much of that program was cut. The Bureau of Street Services has stopped cleaning alleys regularly and has reduced by nearly a third the number of miles of street swept because of delays in replacing retired drivers.

[jttpwalsh]

Thanks for the reply. I agree, litter seems to be a cultural thing.

Not a bad idea on the street cleaners: still need equipment operators and trucks, though. A LOT of the trash is in the form of mattresses, couches, washing machines, etc.

[kearnyirish2]

In my town the restaurants and barber shops opened by immigrants seem completely unregulated; I believe the local government has decided anything is better than an empty storefront (their concern is property taxes, and they could care less about the income tax ramifications). A friend had “replacement Americans” move next door (in a non-owner occupied rental property), and the owner was fined because they would leave their garbage cans at the curb all the time (when they brought out bags of garbage, it went directly to those cans - at curbside seven days a week).

These foreigners aren’t here to assimilate into American culture (whatever that is at this point), and they aren’t here to contribute to the common pot; they are here to live their same lifestyles with someone else footing the bill.

[kearnyirish2]

That is the “double dipping” of people working in the black market economy while taxpayers provide plenty for them as well...