Let’s clean up the neighborhood

To the editor:

(re: “Something needs to give here,” Feb. 16)

As an addendum to Debbi Dolan’s description of “the increase in uncivilized behavior in Riverdale,” here is an update from the battle zone.

Last year, The Riverdale Press published my letter in which I lamented the prevalence of the behaviors noted by Ms. Dolan. I asked that our neighbors show respect for their fellow Riverdalians. Sadly, I must report to Ms. Dolan that the mailbox glue that had been removed has returned.

The people who find a tiny bag of dog waste too heavy to carry to his or her own trash can or to the public trash can not only continues to leave the bags in my neighbors’ trash cans, but now has taken to simply tossing the baggies onto the middle of Fieldston Road.

And Ms. Dolan is correct: The sanitation workers do not remove dog waste bags from our private trash cans. They simply remove our garbage bags and leave the dog waste at the bottom of our cans for us to deal with.

So, if the dogwalker thinks that he or she is performing a public service by tossing dog waste into private trash cans, then he or she is sadly mistaken.

Tossing dog waste into the middle of the street is not helping, either.

As for the people who idle their cars, eat their lunch, and toss their trash out of their car windows, I don’t think that they are from our neighborhood. Maybe that is why they don’t care who will dispose of their trash, or if it is disposed of at all.

Certainly, the sanitation workers don’t clean up the streets as they did in the distant past. And furthermore, in the cold weather, the lunch eaters run their car motors and pollute the air while they eat.

Another notable person who has become a fixture in our neighborhood of private homes is the young man who appears on garbage collection days. He darts onto private properties, looks around, sometimes opens trash cans, and scurries out. Oddly, he performs this ritual either on days when there is no recycling, or many hours after recyclables have been picked up.

It is very disconcerting to encounter a stranger on one’s private property who runs in and invariably emerges empty-handed.

Jane Jacobs, author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” was a prominent urbanologist who opined that the prevalence graffiti could be a harbinger of the decline of an urban neighborhood. If so, then North Riverdale is headed in the wrong direction.

Look at the traffic control box at the corner of Fieldston Road and Mosholu Avenue. Look at the poles along Mosholu, still bedecked with Christmas decorations and ads for past events.

Interfering with pedestrian passage, chairs, tables, and commercial billboards block the center of the sidewalk.

See the graffiti and ads for garage sales, apartment sales, commercial products, and the like — illegally posted on telephone and utility poles, and traffic control boxes all over the greater Riverdale area.

I second Ms. Dolan’s wish for surveillance cameras, and would like to add a request for more public trash cans. And yes, for some really hefty fines for the miscreants.

Vivian Oleen