Brooklyn, NY – Flatbush senior citizen was slapped with a $100 summons from one city agency last week for not cleaning up another city agency’s mess.
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A Sanitation Department enforcement agent wrote 78-year-old Asher Ohevshalom the costly fine for not removing six 100-pound Norway Maple tree trunks left outside his E. 27th St. home by a Parks Department crew that dismembered the dying hardwood.
“I’m angry, I’m really upset with the situation,” said Ohevshalom, according to his granddaughter Esther Yousef, who translated his comments from Farsi to English.
“They said they’d come with a truck and pick it up and they never showed up.”
Ohevshalom, who immigrated to Brooklyn from Iran 19 years ago, is a retired garment worker who survives on a $550-a-month Social Security check – and said the $100 fine is too steep for him to pony up.
“I can’t pay,” he said.
Ohevshalom and neighbors placed at least two 311 complaints this month about the 20-foot-tall tree, which was rotting and dangerously teetering over his driveway, next to a city-owned guardrail on his dead-end block.
Two weeks ago, a Parks Department crew chopped down the tree, collecting all the branches but leaving behind half a dozen massive trunks.
When Ohevshalom and neighbors complained last week, Parks officials said they’d bring a shredder to chop up the wood – but not before a Sanitation agent fined Ohevshalom for a “loose rubbish” violation.
An aide to City Councilman Mike Nelson (D-Flatbush) said Department of Sanitation agents should use common sense before writing tickets.
“When you see the tree stumps on the ground, you should take a look and say, ‘Hey, was this dumped here by the homeowner or done by the Parks Department?'” said Chaim Deutsch.
When asked about the tree trunks, Sanitation Department spokesman Keith Mellis said the agency would investigate whether the agent went overboard.
If the agent did, said Mellis, “the department will write a letter to the Environmental Control Board requesting that the notice of violation be dismissed, and the department will reeducate the officer on the proper issuance of that violation.”
A Parks Department spokeswoman promised the tree pieces would be picked up today.
Typical this is the system at work by the bloomberg org. to charge the poor for the benefit of the rich.
corruption
“the department will write a letter to the Environmental Control Board requesting that the notice of violation be dismissed, and the department will reeducate the officer on the proper issuance of that violation.”. How ’bout having the agent be dismissed? There’s no way to reeducate these animals. If they had to use common sense before each ticket they hand out, then they’d be out of a job, cuz that’s clearly against the bloomberg strategy. but us little cockroaches are not supposed to know about it. I’m sick to my stomach just by looking at this poor man. This agent is by far the worlds most digusted human being.
“‘Hey, was this dumped here by the homeowner or done by the Parks Department?’”
That’s asking way much- the inspectors brains R made of tree trunk
How about issuing a letter of apology to the homeowner who they distressed and humiliated?
He should call 311
I’d like to know if they really did pick up the tree pieces today.
I know this man personally. He is a frail old man who has a heart of gold. Does it “look” like he’d dump tree trunks in front of his house? c’mon, seriously!! Fire this mamzer, don’t waste more money “re-educating’ him….