This story was updated on December 22 to reflect the latest details of the shutdown.

While a partial federal government shutdown has no end in sight, the D.C. government is not only staying open, it is pick up some of the slack.

The city’s Department of Public Works will pick up litter for the 126 properties managed by the National Park Service (places like Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall), according to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office. And if it snows, DPW plans to treat the roadways that the Park Service oversees.

Such work would cost about $100,000 a week, according to city estimates from January.

“As we said when this happened earlier this year: Leadership is about stepping up, not shutting down,” Bowser said in a statement. “Regardless what happens at the federal level, D.C. government will be open for business.”

That wasn’t always the case. In 1995, for example, all D.C. libraries were closed, while it took days to restore building inspectors, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and garbage collection. At one point, malfunctioning traffic signals broke at three intersections and went unrepaired. (The Post estimated at the time that it cost the city about $85 million in uncollected revenue and wages paid to employees who weren’t on the clock.)

But in 2013, instead of shuttering non-essential operations in keeping with the federal government, which has jurisdiction over the District, then-Mayor Vincent Gray simply declared the entirety of the city government to be “essential.” And every year since then, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has inserted a provision in federal spending bills that allows the city to stay open and keep operating under its own local budget.

“Although Trump and the Republicans are moving quickly toward partially shutting down the federal government for Trump’s border wall, the District’s government will remain open and able to spend at next year’s budget levels,” Norton said in a press release before the shutdown was certain. “Congress could learn a thing about fiscal responsibility by taking a look at D.C., which has a balanced budget and a surplus.”

Norton says she has also introduced legislation that is aimed at ensuring back pay for food, custodial, and security contractors. Meanwhile, D.C.’s Department of Employment Services issued a reminder that furloughed employees and contractors who are not paid retroactively are entitled to unemployment benefits.

Nine federal departments and dozens of other agencies shut down at 12:01 a.m. More than 420,000 employees will work but not get paid immediately, while 380,000 people would be placed on temporary leave without pay, according to projections in a Senate report prepared by Democrats.

Back in January, when the federal government closed for 69 hours, the District government stayed open without issue (there was also a brief overnight shutdown in February). At the time, the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo remained open, using funds from 2017.

The Smithsonian says they will do the same this time around—at least until the year’s funds run out. All museums and the National Zoo will stay open through January 1 (except Christmas day, when they always close). If the shutdown continues into 2019, then visitors will be shut out. In that case, roads around the zoo would be closed and the animals cam shut down.

But as the District’s tourism website explains, there is a long list of other options of things to do.