Community Board 12 Prepares for Pesach with Sanitation, Fire, and Police Departments

By Yehudit Garmaise

   While Boro Parkers begin to tackle their freezers and closets, Community Board 12 is making sure that the neighborhood outside is ready for a clean, safe, and healthy Pesach.

   At a Zoom meeting on Tuesday, the Board met with representatives from the City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY), the FDNY, and the NYPD to ensure that Boro Parkers get their extra garbage picked up, burn their chametz safely, and that extra police officers are stationed throughout the community to be available during and after Yom Tov. 

    While whether garbage is picked up is sometimes a concern, DSNY will be providing extra service in Boro Park on additional days to remove everyone’s extra pre-Yom Tov trash.

   On Monday, March 15, for instance, the DSNY will be coming to Boro Park to begin the process of picking up everyone’s bulky items. In addition, from March 24 to 26, right before Pesach, the DSNY will place dumpsters in predesignated spots for Boro Parkers to deposit their household bulk garbage, although trash from construction sites will not be accepted in the dumpsters. 

   In addition to regular pick-up days, on the Thursday, Friday, and Shabbos right before the seders, March 25 to 27, the DSNY also will be coming by to pick up extra garbage, reported Yidel Perlstein, the chairman of Community Board 12.

   Cognizant of Yidden’s need not to own any chametz during Pesach, the sanitation department also recommended that on its extra pick-up days in the three days before Pesach, Boro Parkers should remember to put garbage bags out without putting them out in their garbage cans, so they can be cleaned out.

  During the week of Pesach, DSNY will return to its regularly scheduled pick-ups.

  A fire chief on the Zoom call, spoke about the 23 “designated burn sites,” that are monitored and surrounded by metal, protective barriers, which have made Boro Park’s biurey chametz significantly safer in recent years, reported Mr. Perlstein, who said in the past few years as a result of the burn sites, the neighborhood has decreased its chametz burning injuries to “zero."

   NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and Deputy inspector Richard S. Taylor also joined the Community Board 12 Zoom meeting to reassure participants that, as always, the NYPD will be providing extra coverage of police officers for Yom Tov.

   Not only will the NYPD bring in extra patrols and cars with their lights on driving around over Yom Tov, Mr. Perlstein explained, but officers in “designated post cars” will be stationed at predetermined spots for 24 hours at a time.

   “People should know they can keep calm,” said Mr. Perlstein, who added that anyone can call Community Board 12 at (718) 851-0800 with any other special needs.