Drones are in the news these days, and it’s not all good. They fall out of the sky at “drone shows,” causing injuries; they terrorize the Jersey Shore; they are used as lethal weapons in conflicts overseas.
Closer to home, while perhaps not as nefarious, drones have been suggested for roles that will hardly win them popularity contests. One proposal essentially turns them into skyborne scolds: they’ll buzz above our streets, look at our sidewalks, and send us a ticket if we didn’t dispose of our waste properly.
Thanks, drones.
For several reasons, this would be questionable use of this new technology. While yes, there seems to be acceptance in the public that drones are useful tools for law enforcement, there’s a growing consensus that they should be used sparingly in other realms. The loss of privacy and the specter of a Big Brother-like eye in the sky is the chief fear. And it’s not unreasonable.
As veterans of the Koch, Dinkins and Bloomberg administrations, we have an idea that would match the positive potential of drones with an early, data-driven resource for city government that has been allowed to atrophy. It was a tool on which we relied and, thanks to the web, is now easily accessible to everyone in New York City with a simple phone or computer keystroke. But it could be improved and expanded.
It’s called Scorecard. You can still find it online, though in a much slimmed-down form. Created during the Koch administration, it sent city workers in cars to every corner of the city to record the cleanliness of every neighborhood. It was then collated, rated, and published. It gave you real-time data, but as you can imagine, it was expensive to produce and required significant manpower. It used to be coordinated with Business Improvement Districts, though that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
But what if we sent drones to do the surveying? Residents could know instantly where they stand, where their neighborhood stands, and complain if they feel like they are getting the short end of the cleanliness stick. It could be similar to the police department’s real-time system to report crimes. Call it CompStat for cleanliness.
We’re not talking about garbage pickup. You don’t need a rating for that. Either they emptied your trash cans or they didn’t. No, we’re talking about sweeping the streets and sidewalks, a far more nuanced job, the results of which tend to vary based on who’s doing the reviewing.
Then, the report was published every month on paper. It was public, but it certainly took some doing if you wanted to see it. But it was distributed to reporters, who combed it for stories — mostly negative, of course. You can imagine the headlines: Welcome to the Dirtiest Neighborhood in NYC!
Each sanitation district was given a cleanliness rating — from a little litter to a lot. No — there was no “completely clean” category. This is New York City, after all. But most neighborhoods were consistently above 90%.
For City Hall and the top brass in the Sanitation Department it was an amazing resource. Let’s say one of us noticed one neighborhood was consistently given a bad rating. A simple call to the San-man in charge of that district and, sure enough, by the next report that neighborhood was back above 90.
Drones could cover much more ground than humans in cars, would be far more environmentally friendly, and could peek into space that an Earth-bound human couldn’t see. What’s in that alley? What’s behind that lamppost? What’s behind that double-parked pickup truck?
Scorecard was a big deal back in the day. We even had Scorecard Super Bowl. The district with the best consistent rating would see its supervisor and two of its cleaning teams sent off to the Super Bowl, all expenses paid.
That’s what we call positive reinforcement. The city’s currently kicking around a plan to engage in negative reinforcement from the sky by using drones to ticket us if, for example, we put out our garbage too early or engage in illegal dumping. Of course those behaviors need to be curtailed, but shouldn’t they come with a carrot, too?
And once Scorecard 2.0 is up and running, imagine the good it could do. Cleanest parks? Most trees per sidewalks? The list is endless.
Madonia was chief of staff for Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Steisel was sanitation commissioner under Mayor Ed Koch and first deputy mayor under Mayor David Dinkins. Banks was president of the Real Estate Board of New York.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/02/23/eyes-in-the-skies-checking-on-nycs-cleanliness/