The Chicken

Chickens

It may seem silly but the topic of conversation along Bertha and Delaware is "Chickens". That's right... Someone at the other end of the block (so the story goes) lost or let go of them as a joke and so a couple of chickens that have been roaming around the neighborhood. They have been seen repeatedly over the past two weeks. One thing they have confirmed... chickens CAN fly. I have gotten a picture of one of them and will post it if I can.

School 18 Meeting

There will be a community meeting with the school district about the process for taking down and rebuilding school 18. The meeting will be on Wednesday, June 8 at 7:00 PM in the school gym. Shawn Morris will flyer the immediate neighborhood, but if you can let interested parties know, that will be terrific.

Elections

Well I read in this morning's paper that Kathy Fahey has gained the Working Families endorsement. This area shows strong vote totals for the working families line. From what I have heard elsewhere she has been showing up at all of the major events in the neighborhood and the other candidates have not. The newspaper also mentioned Brian Scavo so it appears the other candidates have no visibility.

School 18

My question regarding school 18 and the houses on Bertha Street revolves around some dissatisfaction that a very good neighbor was asked to move and more than a year went by and nothing much had been done. I was told that last year in the summer the houses would be removed. It did not happen. So my question was not "would the houses be removed?" but "when will the houses be removed?". The last announced timetable that I was aware of was not effective and I wanted to know if there was a new one.

As it turned out I wound up calling Shawn Hamlin, the Senior Architect on the project for the School District. I spoke to him on Monday the 18th. He said the jobs to do the work on school 18 have been bid, and the bids are in, and a contract has been awarded to Sam Greco company as the general contractor. The school district is looking to schedule another neighborhood meeting through the school 18 principal where all the details of the construction wil be discussed. These will be details such as construction fencing, how construction traffic will be routed, expected duration of the project, etc. He said "I can't sugar coat this for you. Your life will be miserable for a while" with construction dust and noise. He did say there were no piles to drive so those of us around the site will be spared that at least. So the construction work is expected to start this July or August of 2005.

I think this is the kind of report I would have liked to have had about the houses.

I see four candidates

Since I asked the question yesterday I have found that there are four candidates for Common Council in our ward. There is Kathy Fahey, Dan McGinn, Ford McLean and Brian Scavo.

Quite a mess yesterday afternoon

I don't know if it was on the news but yesterday about 4:45 pm an apparently stolen car (a neighbor supplied that detail) with possibly three people in it ( I saw two of them and when asking a police officer he indirectly verified that they had been in the car ) was in a chase down Delaware Avenue. It caused a serious two car crash at about Delaware Terrace and then hit another car at Bertha and crashed into a road sign. The driver got out and ran. The policeman I spoke with said they knew who the driver was and would catch up with him. Delaware Avenue was blocked off at Morton to clean up the damage but not blocked as far as I could see from the other direction. Multiple police units and fire trucks at Delaware Terrace. Multiple police units on Bertha. Police seemed to get the damage cleaned up pretty fast. When I went out at 6:00 it was as though nothing happened.

Elections

What's going on with the City Council election? I have received two visits and a phone call from Brian Scavo. Is anybody else running? I am aware that Kathy Fahey is supposed to be running. She is a teacher in the Troy schools and lives over by New Scotland Avenue. But have seen nothing of her around the neighborhood.

Schools

It's been several years now and the school district hasn't dealt with those two houses on Bertha Street next to Schoool 18. They said they were going to tear them down a year ago I think and nothing has happened yet. They asked the people to move out and it has been two to three years and nothing has happened. meanwhile they sit vacant and deteriorating. There was a problem for a while with kids invading one of them but that seems to have subsided. When will that change? When will the district start construction?

Graffiti Van

A few days ago I saw the Graffiti Van of the City. It was working on the pharmacy at the corner of Delaware and Morton. I was glad to see it working to remove that graffiti. Today I got a chance to see the results of its work and I was some what disappointed. The van specialist had just painted over the graffiti painting. That looks better but it still looks bad. Is there anything that can be done to improve that?

-Paul

Elbo Room

Does anyone have an idea what is happening with the Elbo Room? I know it changed hands but then there has been no activity there.

Marking Their Territory

Drove by 10 Barclay around 5pm on Sunday, and saw one of the kids tagging the side of the porch in red marker. You can check it out yourself. The graffiti is on the south side of the porch. Can’t imagine the landlord would appreciate this!

Nieghborhood Patrol

Nice to see the police out patrolling the nieghborhood. Just saw a police car heading down Barclay. Regular patrols like this would really make a world of difference.

Graffiti Van

I just saw the Stop Graffiti Van making the rounds today. I didn't even realize the city has one of these until today. If you see any new graffiti/tagging, call the Dept of General Servcies at 434-2489.

Police Were Called on 10 Barclay Today

One of the neighbors called the police to report activity at 10 Barclay. I didn't see when/if the police showed up, but the house was quiet when I passed by an hour later.

Welcome

Welcome to the Delaware Area Neighborhood Watch blog. The purpose of this blog is to give the neighbors around Deleware Ave. a place to record what's going on in the neighborhood.