More street-cleaning ticket victims

Residents on Cleveland Avenue were inconvenienced today despite their best efforts at avoiding a ticket for street cleaning. The alderman's Web site listed today's street cleaning route but did not include the east side of Cleveland Avenue between North and Armitage in the list of streets to be cleaned. Yet the 43rd Ward superintendent's office had it on their list. They cleaned the street and the Department of Revenue ticketed.

This is not the first instance of the mismatched schedules between the alderman and her ward office. A constituent called the two offices to confirm these new inconsistencies. The disclaimer from the alderman's office is "the schedule is subject to change." But when I called Streets and Sanitation, they said that the schedule has been in effect for three years.

Cleaning was scheduled only on the following streets: Cleveland from Blackhawk-Clybourn, Hudson from Armitage-North, Mohawk from Blackhawk-Clybourn, Sedgwick from Armitage-Blackhawk.

I've discovered dozens of small problems in the street-cleaning ticketing system that are affecting hundreds of Lincoln Park residents every week, and possibly hundreds of thousands in the city yearly. I have plans to improve this system so these problems almost never occur, and residents have good recourse when they do.

To those affected, you should contest the tickets and call on Alderman Daley (773-327-9111) to pressure her to write a letter to accompany your request or have the Department of Revenue reverse all of these tickets. (Her office already told one constituent that they would not do that). Include the following documents in your contest:

(Letter of contestation)
(Web site screen shot)

At the same time, despite the schedule calling for it, no street cleaning was done this week in the area between Fullerton and Lakeview, east of Clark Street, due to serious errors that our campaign discovered and which was broadcast on WGN and will appear in upcoming editions of Inside and Skyline.