A listener to WBEZ 91.5 FM posed a question to the stations excellent Curious City producers asking, “What’s the deal with street cleaning? Does it actually do anything?”
The listener contended that after street cleaning, the street doesn’t look much different than on the day the bright orange Street Cleaning signs went up, implying it was some sort of scam for the city to collect more revenue through parking tickets.
Curious City, in its usual thorough way, gives listeners a near dissertation on the subject of street sweeping in a recent radio story and on their website.
Curious City reporter Lauren Chooljian talks to the Department of Streets and Sanitation to get the scoop on the obvious necessity of keeping the city’s streets clean.
But she also reports on the large volume of parking tickets and revenue produced from street cleaning violations. According to WBEZ’s report, the city issues between $14-$15 million dollars in street cleaning tickets every year.
So, is street cleaning a necessary function of municipal government or is it a ploy to generate revenue for the city on the backs of drivers? Or is it both?
We’ll leave it to readers to decide by reading’s Chooljian’s extensive piece, “Street sweeping: Essential service or revenue scam?”
