Audit Report on the on the New York City Department of Sanitation’s Responsiveness to Dirty Vacant Lot Complaints
Executive Summary
We conducted this audit to determine whether the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) has adequate controls to ensure the timely investigation and follow-up of complaints of dirty vacant lots. Chapter 31 of the City Charter mandates that DSNY enforce provisions of the Charter that require property owners to maintain their vacant lots in a clean and sanitary manner, free of debris and other litter. When property owners fail to do so, DSNY may clean the lots at the owners’ expense, after first providing the owners with notice and an opportunity to clean their properties. Dirty lot conditions that DSNY addresses typically include excessive vegetation, abandoned appliances, dilapidated fences, unoccupied buildings, and visible signs of putrescible waste that may attract rodents. DSNY’s Lot Cleaning Division (LCD) is responsible for cleaning conditions that are typically outside the scope of DSNY’s district garages, such as the perimeters of abandoned homes and dirty vacant lots.[1]
LCD’s lot cleaning process begins when individuals report dirty conditions on vacant lots to DSNY in one of several ways—through the 311 system (via telephone or online by completing a form found on DSNY’s website[2]), by letter, or by email. Following LCD’s receipt of a complaint, a Lot Inspection Unit (LIU) inspector conducts an initial inspection to validate the reported dirty conditions. If the lot is found dirty, the Intake Unit conducts a research/ownership search to identify the owner of record.
LCD’s Field Operations unit is responsible for cleaning both privately-owned and City-owned lots. If the LCD field supervisor finds the lot dirty and accessible during the compliance inspection, the supervisor forwards a service request to the appropriate LCD garage for cleaning. If the field supervisor finds the lot dirty but not accessible, the complaint is forwarded to LCD’s Access Warrant Unit (AWU), which will conduct an inspection to determine whether hazardous health conditions (e.g., evidence of rodent activity) necessitating DSNY action are present. If they are, DSNY will ask the New York City Law Department to submit an application for an access warrant to the New York State Supreme Court. If the Court issues the access warrant, DSNY has 30 days, commencing on the 13th business day after the date of the warrant to access and clean the lot.
DSNY uses an information system called LotSmart to record the complaints it receives concerning dirty vacant lots and to manage the above-described process of addressing them.
Audit Findings and Conclusion
This audit found that DSNY has adequate controls to ensure the timely investigation and follow-up of complaints of dirty vacant lots—with some exceptions. We found that LCD consistently complied with its policy and timeliness targets for inspecting and researching the lots to determine their condition and ownership. For lots found dirty, LCD generally completed the tasks necessary to have them cleaned—by the owner or DSNY—in a timely manner, with some exceptions.
LotSmart data reflected that DSNY met its timeliness targets for inspecting lots and researching their ownership over 99 percent of the time. DSNY met its timeliness target for cleaning dirty lots, after the required compliance inspections, 78 percent of the time.
However, we found that DSNY conducted the required compliance inspections within an average of 9 business days, a time frame that exceeds management’s expected benchmark of 5 to 7 business days. Moreover, some compliance inspections—18.6 percent—took longer than 15 days to complete. Currently, DSNY has no written Service Level Agreement (SLA) criterion for the maximum time frame in which it must complete a compliance inspection. Establishing a written time frame for these inspections would allow management to identify and address the delays and could thus help improve LCD’s operational efficiency.
In addition, we calculated the timeliness of the lot cleaning process as a whole and found that 84 percent of the privately-owned (non-AWU related) and City-owned lots were cleaned within DSNY’s expected time frames of, respectively, 82 business days for privately-owned and 71 business days for City-owned lots.[3] (Please see Appendix I for a chart of steps and their applicable time frames for the lot cleaning process.)
Finally, LotSmart data also showed that when the Court issued access warrants, LCD cleaned the lots in question before the access warrants expired.
Apart from the areas discussed above that warrant improvement, DSNY’s LCD has made noteworthy progress since 2008—the last time the New York City Comptroller’s Office audited this activity. Specifically, the current audit found that DSNY has integrated process flow and documentation functionality into the LotSmart system DSNY uses to manage its lot cleaning operation. For example, the agency now uploads photographs of lots into LotSmart to evidence the conditions found and work done at the lots that are the subjects of complaints. In addition, LCD has adopted 311’s SLA timeliness standards for initial inspections, research/ownership searches, and cleaning. (Please see Appendix II for examples of photo images LCD records and uses to document various stages of the lot cleaning process.)
Audit Recommendations
Based on our findings, we make three recommendations:
- DSNY should utilize aging reports that show the length of time it takes LCD personnel to complete each stage of the lot-cleaning process, from the time DSNY receives a complaint through the time when each dirty lot is cleaned, so that DSNY can better track the status of all dirty vacant lots reported to it and ensure that they are cleaned reasonably promptly.
- DSNY should examine whether LCD’s lack of a written time standard for compliance inspections contributes to delays in its cleaning of dirty lots.
- DSNY should develop written time standards for compliance inspections and ensure that LCD staff are made aware of those time frames.
Agency Response
DSNY agreed with the audit’s findings and recommendations.
[1] LCD also addresses other cleaning-related conditions, such as large drop-offs and unclean non-lot locations that do not have a tax block or lot assigned to them. These areas are referred to as “Leventhals” and are generally center medians, dead-end or uncut streets, or areas adjacent to railways that need to be cleaned.
[2] The current DSNY form is posted at https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/contact/complaints/lot-cleaning-request (accessed January 26, 2021).
[3] We used an 82 and 71 business-day target to calculate the overall period in which the privately-owned (non-AWU related) and City-owned lots were addressed by DSNY, respectively. We determined the 82 and 71 business-day target by adding all the individual time frames associated with the privately-owned (non-AWU related) and City-owned lot cleaning process.