I came across this dead fish on the bone the other day in my alley. Maybe something from the China Dragon?

What's up with this stairwell trash pit on 9th street? It's just down from Wagtime. Can the city or the property owner not get this cleaned up? I'm going to submit a service request for this but I'm not sure if the city will do this work.

Close Up:

Why don't neighborhood cleanups continue throughout the spring and summer? Shouldn't these be folded into the fabric of the community as a regular activity? They don't have to be very sophisticated endeavors. Pick up some trash, pull weeds, clean treeboxes, etc...

Updated: I've updated this post with additional info. See below.

Before I attempt to answer that question, let me ponder a bit about this picture. First, here are the details. This mattress was discarded over 10 days ago. I first noticed it Saturday April 28th, that's 2 Saturday's ago. It's located in front of the condo at 1404 11th Street at the corner of 11th & 0 Streets NW.

I assume this is from someone living nearby. It could be a random drop-off, but probably not. Someone needs to discard of a mattress and they drop it on the side of the road, thinking they've seen this done before with other objects, that's fine. A day, two days, a week goes by and they keep seeing it there. Clearly by this point they obviously know that's not how to properly discard of the mattress and they don't care. So this person just keeps walking by as if it's not their problem anymore. Amazing.

Back to my initial question of why this mattress is nobody's problem. We are all islands in this city. Both private citizens and public servants, we are all just cruising along doing our own thing. And that's valid. We are busy city dwellers working to pay rent, mortgages, school, or whatever. However, the city has ultimately broken down when there is no linkage of responsibility. We all see that mattress as someone else's problem, but we should all be empowered to take responsibility and fix the problem.

Here’s my breakdown on this. Basically all the people I could see as playing a role in fixing these issues in the community but these are the people who see this as not their problem.

• Condo Owners/Property Management. They walk out the door every morning and see this. I guess they don’t think it’s their problem.
• Sanitation Dept. The city trash can sits less than 15 weeks away and ha been emptied in the last week. They don’t care about this because it’s not in their duties.
• Police. Shouldn’t the police have the necessary tools to communicate to someone to fix this? Aren’t the officers on this beat supposed to be invested in the community? I thought the idea of a beat patrol was to know the residents, keep an eye out, and when they see something wrong to work with their community partners? Either they don't care, not trained properly, or they don't have the right tools to work within a community.
• Local Business Owners. Well, not too many nearby businesses. The Annex market probably likes it. However, Pepco owns a half a block of real estate next door of course they don’t see this as their problem.
• ANC. This lies in ANC2F and I would assume one of the elected members has seen this in the past 10 days and could report it to the proper channels. Probably not.

Well, I’m sure this list can go on and on. We are all islands and to me this illustrates that no one feels empowered to take responsibility. And ultimately I guess most people probably just don’t care.

Update.
One mattress begets one more and a box spring. See pics below. As Si noted in the comments anyone who is interested can use the DC Service Request website to report this problem. I've done this for multiple other issues, but have decided I'm going to hold off for now on the mattresses. I'm curious to see how long people will let these hang around.

So someone was nice enough to put some food out while they were moving. Come on now. Just take it to a shelter or church or somewhere. Don’t just let it sit out on the sidewalk.

Readers,
I'm searching for more information about DC treebox rules & regulations. Any links or info would be appreciated. Please just drop some info the comments area.

I'm curious about the metal grates - do those have to be removed by the city? Are they owned by the city? Any other info is helpful.

Cheers
Treebox V

DC Urban Gardeners. A cool organization in the District promoting sustainable gardening, environmental practices, and a cleaner D.C.

Check them out here.

Check out their blog too.

Treebox readers: Make sure to check out and bookmark the DC Vacant Properties blog. Similar in spirit to this blog, the author is tracking a niche topic. In this case he's tracking issues about the vacant properties in our city.