Sanitation versus Sonny

March 3, 2007


By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

It’s like an old Borscht Belt joke — only Sonny Soave wasn’t joking.

“My neighbor on 80th Street received a ticket for a dirty driveway,” Soave told me the other day.

So what’s the big deal?

“She doesn’t have a driveway!” said Soave.

But he and his neighbors aren’t laughing. Rather, they’re convinced that enforcement officers from the Department of Sanitation are writing random tickets and littering them all over his perfectly clean block.

The trouble began earlier this month when Soave spotted an officer parked across the street from his house, so he went over and knocked on the car window.

“I saw her writing tickets, without even getting out of her car,” Soave said. “So when I asked her if she was going to write my neighbor a ticket and she just smiled at me and said no.”

But Soave stuck around to see what would happen, and sure enough, the enforcement officer ticketed several people on his block, including his friendly neighbor.

This is the part where Soave’s disposition went from Sonny to not so sunny.

“The ticket stated that there were papers and candy bar wrappers in her driveway. Not only doesn’t she have a driveway, but there were no papers anywhere near her yard,” Soave said.

Soave has already taken the ticket to Councilman Vince Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) and plans to ask Community Board 10 for help.

The councilman wants answers.

“People are feeling victimized by the DOS,” said Gentile. “Instead of residents feeling a partnership with their local officials, they feel they are being harassed.”

Gentile also believes that some residents have even given up on Brooklyn altogether.

Sonny Soave isn’t going anywhere.

“Brooklyn is my home,” Soave said. “Tell the DOS that they are the ones who should pack up their things and go.”

I asked a DOS employee for his response to all the vitriol.

“The truth is, they usually won’t ticket you unless you give them a reason,” said my DOS source (call him Deep Trash) over an apple martini. “If you don’t complain or ask them to do much, they won’t ticket you. Just don’t piss them off.”

Officially, a DOS spokesman said that not only don’t ticket blitzes exist, but agents are only enforcing the rules already on the book.

“The Department of Sanitation does not engage in any so-called ticket blitzes,” agency spokesman Matthew Lipani said. “The dirty area violations can be written at any time, and encompass dirty backyards, areaways, courts, alleys and air shafts, which must be kept clean at all times.”

Regarding Sonny’s neighbor’s phantom driveway, Lipani said the issue of what constitutes a driveway is not for Sanitation to decide, but for the Environmental Control Board, which is where you go when you want to fight City Hall.

So how many government agencies does it take to decide what constitutes a driveway? Berle? Dangerfield? Anyone?

The Kitchen Sink
Pass the ribs, my friends! It looks like the sale of Griswold’s has hit a snag. Sources say the restaurant, scheduled to close to make room for a bank, will now be open through May. ... Those capitalist pigs: In response to the fast-growing Chinese population in southwest Brooklyn, Lutheran Medical Center is celebrating the “Year of the Pig,” by opening the area’s first Chinese health care unit in 2004, a specialized unit designed to cater to the Chinese community and provide a culturally sensitive health care environment. Ayn Rand would be proud. …

A waste-transfer station planned for Southwest Brooklyn may be headed for the dump. Local greens are dredging up debate and petitioning residents to halt the mini-dump on the shore of Gravesend Bay in Bensonhurst. …

March is Women’s History Month! On March 8, state Sen. Marty Golden will honor the following women at his favorite place, the Bay Ridge Manor: Iris Chiu; Andrea D’Emic, principal of St. Patrick’s School; Carmella Golino, from St. Finbar; Sandy Irrera; Virginia Lake from Bishop Kearney High School; and Maureen Neuringer of the Mapleton Kiwanis. And you thought women’s history month was all about mourning Anna Nicole Smith. …

Now here’s a party: Assemblyman William Colton will be joining the Purim celebration at the Shore Parkway Jewish Center on March 4th. The celebration starts at 1 pm and ends with a costume contest. Colton will then lead participants to a rally against a waste station, where the group will toss traditional Hamantaschen cookies at the Department of Sanitation reps. …

She lost her race for the Assembly, but Lucretia Regina-Potter (who is also manager of Bari Tile & Stone in Bensonhurst) was named interim Republican District Leader in the 49th District. Congrats, Lucretia. Now, about those dirty area tickets.