The LA Times got its hands on an internal city report this week that says Los Angeles is traaaaashy. Some of the findings in the report, compiled after a thorough investigation by senior livability advisor Mark A. Thomas, are pretty bad:
· Only about a third (35 percent) of streets are cleaned "on a regular basis," and there's no priority for more highly-used streets.
· The city thought there were "several thousand" trash bins out around LA, but the sanitation department mapped it recently and found just 700 (the city is about 470 square miles).
· The Fashion District Business Improvement District collects six tons of garbage every day.
· "Cleanups in South L.A. have pulled as much as 100 tons of garbage from a single alley."
· The city spends $12 million a year to remove large trash items like furniture and electronics, "but it can't keep up" with the amount of dumping.
The report recommends "a task force," naturally, to come up with some kind of plan or another to keep the streets, alleys, and sidewalks clean, and it suggests taking inspiration from New York City's Project Scorecard, "a data-driven approach." In New York, this kind of intensive clean-up effort is often a gentrification exercise, a way to crack down on poor people and make neighborhoods more palatable for the rich. In Los Angeles, where neighborhoods are more segregated, the idea doesn't have quite the Giuliani-style implications; if the city wants to put more money and energy into poor neighborhoods, that's probably a good thing.
Mayor Eric Garcetti has already given sanitation drivers smartphone apps to help them get through their routes faster and City Attorney Mike Feuer has launched "a strike force" to catch illegal dumping "in the city's most notorious sites."
· Blunt report finds L.A. isn't keeping up with removing dumped trash [LAT]
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