Over the course of one weekend, Ms. Barbee recalled, "the garbage was piled up like mountains," and some stores received tickets for sanitation violations.

Many thousands more could be brought in if summonses were served by mail - as are summonses for other sanitation violations.

Here businesses struggle to survive, sometimes in the wake of crime and buried in a barrage of sanitation violations.

The technicians, recently hired, focus more on spotting smoking-ban violations than do the inspectors, who also inspect for sanitation violations.

He proposed exempting 28,000 more small businesses from the commercial rent tax and said he would cut back on the summonses issued to mom-and-pop businesses for minor sanitation violations by about 46,000.

Officials suspended the operating license of the hotel where the Germans had stayed, but a hearing on the episode revealed that a government inspection of the inn had recorded 13 sanitation violations a month earlier.

It asks for the authority to serve abandoned-car summonses by mail - like summonses for other sanitation violations.

The Transit Authority, which adjudicates its own cases, issued 4,828 summonses for sanitation violations last year.

For instance, a license could be revoked if there were more than one serious assault inside the bar, and a bar could be closed for 10 days after three sanitation violations.

Since 1987, the building has been cited for more than 20 sanitation violations and more than 90 housing code violations.