New York City is once again offering a master class in how to do the bare minimum slowly while insisting everyone be grateful for it.
After days of mounting frustration, an eight-foot-high mountain of trash near Gracie Mansion was finally cleared Monday—only after public outrage boiled over and The Post highlighted what many residents had been muttering under their breath. The mayor’s neighborhood looked immaculate while the rest of the city stewed in frozen garbage.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged the problem in passing, noting that sanitation was running about 24 hours behind following Winter Storm Fern. That storm dumped roughly a foot of snow across the city, which quickly hardened into ice during a deep freeze. The explanation might have landed better if New Yorkers weren’t staring at block-long piles of black trash bags fused together by snow and slush more than a week later.
Upper East Side residents, in particular, noticed the contrast. Sidewalks around Gracie Mansion appeared pristine while nearby streets were lined with towering garbage mounds.
The most notorious pile—an eight-foot ridge of trash bags along East 79th Street near Carl Schurz Park—was removed by Monday. But the clean-up felt more symbolic than systemic. Other eyesores remained, including a growing pile on East 88th Street and a 75-foot stretch of trash bags outside apartment buildings along East 83rd Street.
For people living and working there, patience is wearing thin. Doormen and residents reported more bags stacking up by the hour, unsure when collection would resume.
Even sanitation workers described confusion, saying assignments changed overnight and crews were frequently redirected without clear guidance. The message from City Hall may be “we’re working on it,” but on the ground it looks a lot like improvisation.
The Department of Sanitation insists hundreds of trucks are running every 12-hour shift and that trash and compost are being prioritized over recyclables. Officials argue that this is standard practice after winter storms and point out that trash collection once paused entirely for weeks in similar conditions. That comparison may be true, but it is hardly reassuring to a city that pays premium taxes for premium services.
What sticks with New Yorkers is not the storm or even the delay—it’s the perception of unequal urgency. When the mayor’s front yard gets cleared while entire neighborhoods remain buried in refuse, explanations start sounding like excuses.
