TESTIMONY
Anna Sacks on the Necessity of City Funding for Community Composting
2:08:37
·
123 sec
Anna Sacks, Legislative Chairman of the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board, argues for the restoration of $7,000,000 in city funding for community composting.
- Sacks criticizes the Department of Sanitation New York (DSNY) for relying on temporary private philanthropy for community composting, emphasizing the city's responsibility.
- She highlights the disparity in city spending, comparing the lack of funding for composting to the substantial investment in NYPD encrypted radios.
- Sacks stresses that successful implementation of the brown bin program depends on community composting and educational outreach, which are currently underfunded.
- She expresses concern over the trend of treating environmental programs as luxuries rather than necessities, leading to their premature budget cuts.
Anna Sachs
2:08:37
Hi.
2:08:38
My name is Emma Sachs.
2:08:39
I'm the legislative chairman of Handysloud Waste Advisory Board and a member of Save Our Compose Fellowship that I'm testifying today on behalf of myself.
2:08:46
I appreciate the recognition that DSNY gave to community composting, but lip service does not pay the bills, and this is an expensive city to live in.
2:08:55
I think that it's great that so far there has been Piper philanthropy supporting community composting after DSNY and the mayor of the Fund did it completely but private philanthropy is actually going to expire soon.
2:09:08
It doesn't bring big reuse LES and earth's matter to June, they're actually having to rely on cash reserves, which are really meant for only a true emergency and not a manufactured emergency.
2:09:20
And private philanthropy as I think we can intuitively understand is is more for something like the opera or the arts museums.
2:09:29
Bipitalanthropy does not wanna fill in these gaps, sanitation gaps, where it's public good and the city should itself buy be funding these programs.
2:09:39
So there isn't private philanthropy coming through.
2:09:42
There is not going to be more.
2:09:43
And so I think that that was really misleading for the department to say that.
2:09:48
We're asking for 7,000,000 to be restored for community composting.
2:09:51
This is point 6% of New York City's budget.
2:09:55
It is a rounding error of a rounding error.
2:09:58
I don't agree with the argument that we don't have this money.
2:10:00
Somehow, we have the money for 500,000,000 for encrypted near NYPD radios.
2:10:06
But some but we don't have money, $7,000,000 for community composting.
2:10:09
It doesn't make sense.
2:10:11
We will not have success in the brown bean program if we do not have community composting, if we don't have the educational outreach.
2:10:17
And so we're investing 1,000,000 of dollars in this new program that we really do want to succeed and get we're not in investing in education apps which needed for it to succeed.
2:10:29
I also am upset with this trend and near the environmental programs are purely viewed as nice to have, but not needs to have.
2:10:37
And they're the first to be cut whenever there's an environment of whenever
