District 3 supervisor candidate Danny Sauter, a North Beach cleanup organizer for the last eight years, offers officials advice on how to make The City cleaner
For the past eight years, I’ve been organizing neighborhood cleanups in North Beach. These community cleanups bring neighbors together in pursuit of a common goal: cleaner streets. They are fantastic ways to meet others and roll up your sleeves to improve our city, one trash bag at a time.
A typical cleanup ends with a big pile of trash and a renewed sense of city pride. But neighbors can’t turn out every day and shouldn’t be expected to fill The City’s responsibility for keeping the streets clean. Now it’s time for The City to step up, too. Here’s how San Francisco can work to create a cleaner city. Add more trash cansEarlier this month, I walked 10 blocks without seeing a trash can. This is becoming commonplace, thanks to more than 1,500 trash cans being removed in 2007. When The City removes 30% of its trash cans, is it any wonder that more trash is littered around our streets? San Francisco should, in short order, come up with a plan to add back hundreds of trash cans. These cans should be standard-order and placed in critical areas in a matter of months. Bring back street sweepingEntire neighborhoods are not serviced by mechanical street sweeping. Most of Russian Hill, North Beach, and Nob Hill do not receive street cleaning. These are our city’s densest neighborhoods with countless eyes of tourists and visitors upon them. Ex // Top Stories Saturday pop-up clinic provides vaccines for young SFUSD students Vaccinations required for SFUSD enrollment will be offered to preschoolers and kindergarteners Peace Day celebrations commemorate 40th anniversary of first SF event It’s also the 43rd anniversary since the U.N. first inaugurated the day Mayor’s SFUSD task force seeks ‘solutions,’ not source of ‘blame’ Breed’s team begins its work amid increased scrutiny the district faces over handling of multiple crises Decades-old decisions, fueled by residents not wanting to move cars, are responsible. It’s time to change this: We can expand street sweeping to a few times per month to find a balance that results in cleaner streets and minimal parking headaches. Expand street-cleaning teamsBlock-by-block street-cleaning helps take litter off the streets and spot larger issues such as graffiti and vandalism. This also has the added benefit of being an important opportunity for workforce development. Programs such as North Beach Citizens Street Beautification Team have shown that this can be a way to support those experiencing homelessness as they seek to gain work and responsibility. Making progress on homelessness and making our streets cleaner? Let’s double down on this successful model. Improve Public WorksSan Francisco Public Works has 1,200 employees and an annual budget of nearly $500 million. This is a $280 million increase since 2007, the year the mass trash-can removals began. With its budget nearing a half-billion dollars, residents of San Francisco are right to expect clean sidewalks, streets, and open spaces. Efforts to reform Public Works have been tossed around, passed and then undone, in recent years. Despite this, the work remains: We need to improve Public Works to be more focused on results and stretch our dollars further to provide clean streets. San Francisco has big challenges as a city. While picking up litter isn’t as important as ending our drug crisis or building more affordable housing, it’s a visible step toward a better city. It’s a tangible way for City Hall to show people that it still knows how to get results, something we’re all hungry for. Let’s keep pushing our city to improve, one clean block at a time. Danny Sauter — a 10-plus year resident of District 3, a former president of North Beach Neighbors, and executive director of San Francisco Neighborhood Centers Together — is a candidate for District 3 supervisor.
San Francisco San Francisco Politics 2024 San Francisco Elections Board Of Supervisors District 3 Trash Pollution
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