Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided to increase the number of NICE New York City neighborhoods from 18 to 59. NICE. is an acronym for "Neighborhood Intensive Cleanup Effort," a program that began a year ago to remove litter from the streets of all five boroughs.

Bloomberg made that announcement at a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 18, with Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty at the Aubrey Johnson Day Care Center in the Bushwick neighborhood, one of the pilot areas.

"We have seen a marked improvement in all 18 of the participating sanitation districts that needed a boost in their cleanliness and quality of life," Bloomberg said. "Operation NICE has successfully identified and cleaned litter strewn lots and streets and has helped renew New Yorkers' faith that their government is responsive to their needs."

According to Doherty, "Operation NICE utilizes a block by block approach to street cleanliness. Using an independent cleanliness scorecard as a measurement tool, District Superintendents are held accountable by DSNY leadership for each block within their command. When areas are identified either by the scorecard, calls to (the city service telephone number) 311 or by the community, DSNY assets are reassigned and the condition is corrected. District Superintendents are given additional flexibility to assign resources where they are needed and work with the community to ameliorate persistent problems."

The sanitation commissioner also said "DSNY community affairs personnel interact with local communities in English, Chinese, Korean, Yiddish, Russian and Spanish providing shopkeepers and property owners with flyers and information on sanitation regulations and tips on how to increase street cleanliness. Over the last year they helped neighborhoods improve their cleanliness by providing technical support, equipment, encouraging and assisting volunteer activities and enrolling thousands of businesses and homeowners in the adopt-a-basket campaign which provides participants with plastic bags to line street litter baskets. The adopt-a-basket campaign provides local storeowners with trash bags and allows them to empty street baskets by putting the bagged trash curbside. This stops overflowing wastebaskets that causes street litter. Finally, enforcement agents monitor known illegal dumping sites and impound the vehicles of offenders."
—Donald H. Harrison