Fewer New Yorkers are getting slapped with $100 tickets for dirty sidewalks and gutters – yet the city’s streets keep getting cleaner.

The Sanitation Department wrote 43% fewer tickets for litter on residential sidewalks in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to data obtained by the Daily News.

The change came after the City Council ordered sanitation agents last fall to stop writing tickets at lunchtime, when people weren’t home to sweep litter off their property. They must now look for litter between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. or between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.

City Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), who pushed the Council to make the change, said complaints about unfair tickets are way down.

“The number of constituents walking into my office with crazy tickets, complaining about them, is down, conservatively, 50% to 60%,” Felder said.

The decrease has not been consistent citywide.

While tickets plunged by two-thirds or more in Manhattan, Queens and on Staten Island, the declines were much smaller in Brooklyn (23%) and the Bronx (2%).

Some community districts in those two boroughs saw tickets spike as much as 253%, as happened in Brooklyn’s Community Board 2, which includes Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Vinegar Hill.

Fewer tickets overall have apparently not made New York any dirtier: The percentage of streets rated “acceptably clean” by sanitation inspectors rose to 95.7% in the first five months of the year, the highest ever and up from 94.9% in the same period last year.

Sanitation Department spokesman Vito Turso said the agency has given its 134 agents handheld computers and urged them to focus on fixing the worst conditions.

Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn), though, said too many innocent homeowners still get stuck with “abusive” $100 tickets because someone dropped a paper bag or cigarette pack in front of their home.

The most tickets continue to be written in Brooklyn.

(Source: NY Daily News)