Again, swept by New York
NEW YORK -- So I'm walking down 6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan not long ago when I realize something is missing, something that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
And then it hit me: Trash. Clogged gutters. Overflowing barrels. Discarded cigarette butts, empty coffee cups, candy wrappers blowing in the breeze.
In Boston, trash is all over the place. In Manhattan, there's hardly any to be seen. What gives? Could it be that surly, self-important New Yorkers are cleaner than Bostonians, prouder of their city than we are of ours? Does Michael Bloomberg do a better job than Thomas M. Menino of cleaning his streets?
These things I had to know, which is why I found myself sitting in the paneled office of John Doherty, a legend of a man who rose from street-level trash hauler to become New York's sanitation commissioner and is currently serving his second stint in the top job. How, I ask, does he keep his city so clean?
I should note that Menino, effective on so many other fronts, seems to have thrown up his arms at Boston's mounting litter problem, as if cleaning the city is an impossible job. The mayor recently said to me, ''I need a partnership," but he's never described what he means.
Back to Doherty. First he describes the electric brooms, or street sweepers. He says New York has alternate-side parking 12 months a year so the brooms can get at the curbs. Anyone who leaves a car in the way gets a $100 ticket and a huge shame sticker on the window saying the vehicle was stopping the street from being swept.
In Boston, we do alternate side cleaning eight months a year. The parking fines are just $25. Officials flirted with those stickers but decided they cost too much. In other words, I'm already impressed or, as a Bostonian, depressed.
Then Doherty proudly describes the city law that requires businesses and residents to keep their sidewalks and gutters clean.
''When sanitation enforcement people come by, if they find your sidewalk or gutter dirty -- not just one piece of paper or a cigarette butt, but a clear lax effort -- you'll get nailed with a $100 violation," Doherty says.
Sanitation enforcement people? $100 fines? We're on unfamiliar ground here. An aide says New York issued 142,000 tickets for dirty sidewalks and gutters in the last fiscal year, most to businesses. This, I say, must cost a fortune.
''Like anything else with summonses involved, the enforcement pays for itself," Doherty says.
Why is it that in Boston a meter maid appears at your car if you're two minutes past due, but the same city government can't pick up trash that's been caked in gutters for months? Because the city isn't making money off it, that's why. It could if it followed the New York example.
I'm ready to bid farewell to Doherty, understanding why his streets are immaculate and ours are not. Problem is, he's still talking now about ''business improvement districts," in which businesses band together to hire cleaning services to watch over their blocks. This allows them to avoid those nasty fines.
Then, Doherty says, there's the adopt-a-trash-can program. When a public barrel fills up, someone from a nearby business pulls the plastic bag out, ties it up, and leaves it on the curb for sanitation to pick up.
I start putting on my coat. One more thing, Doherty says. He describes ''the scorecard." A group from the mayor's office cruises the city rating the cleanliness of streets. ''It helps us manage where we need to put people," Doherty says.
Then he adds, ''People won't litter on a clean street."
Underlings say Doherty drives a different route to work each day and often snaps up his phone to bark at staff when he sees litter. I remember driving with Menino one day a decade ago when he did the same thing. If he tried that now, the city would go broke from his cellphone bills.
New York has created one program after another to make clean streets not just a priority, but a reality. In Boston, what we've created is one fine mess.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 