Dear Mayor Mamdani and Members of the City Council,
I am writing to urge the City of New York to reconsider the current practice of assigning road maintenance and de-icing responsibilities to the Department of Sanitation, and to advocate for the creation of a dedicated public works or street maintenance department, similar to the model used successfully in cities such as Buffalo.
While DSNY performs an essential and demanding role in keeping the city clean, sanitation work and road maintenance are fundamentally different functions. Combining them has led to significant operational inefficiencies, unnecessary costs, and avoidable damage to infrastructure, vehicles, and public health.
In particular, DSNY’s current salting practices create several persistent problems:
• Salt spreader trucks routinely continue dispensing salt while stopped at traffic lights, resulting in large accumulations at intersections that serve no safety purpose and accelerate corrosion of vehicles and roadway surfaces.
• On one-way streets, snow and salt are consistently pushed to one side, concentrating damage on parked vehicles. In my own case, this contributed directly to premature brake rotor failure and a damaged ABS sensor, repairs that are both costly and common among city drivers.
• After snow events, DSNY street sweepers are not deployed in a timely manner to remove excess salt and debris, allowing corrosive material to remain on roadways for weeks.
Excessive salt use has broad consequences: damage to citizens’ vehicles, accelerated deterioration of roads and bridges, increased maintenance costs, contamination of soil and waterways, and respiratory impacts on residents. Airborne salt dust on dry days following snow events affects pedestrians and cyclists directly and exacerbates respiratory conditions such as asthma, while contributing to the corrosion of nearby infrastructure and vehicles.
There is also a fiscal concern. Snow operations require extensive overtime from sanitation staff, often at premium rates, even though road maintenance is not their primary function. A dedicated public works department, staffed and equipped specifically for roadway operations, would allow for more precise salt application, better post-storm cleanup, reduced overtime expenses, and longer service life for city infrastructure.
Such a dedicated public works initiative would also create meaningful employment opportunities, providing specialized positions in road maintenance, winter operations, and infrastructure management. This would both enhance operational expertise and contribute positively to the local economy.
New York City is large, complex, and deserving of specialized departments that can perform their missions efficiently and responsibly. Separating sanitation from road maintenance would align responsibility with expertise and ultimately save money while improving quality of life for residents.
I respectfully ask that the City Council and the Mayor’s Office study this issue and consider pilot programs or structural changes that move roadway maintenance out of DSNY and into a dedicated public works framework.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Thomas Altfather Good