Community meeting for 23rd St. 72nd Pct.-Tues. July 14

I wanted to thank all of those who came out to Tuesday's meeting at CB7 with the 72nd Pct. We had 32 folks, plus reps from CB7, CM Gonzalez's office and the 72nd Pct.'s C.O. Dept. Supervisor Pintos and community affairs Officer Siclari. Mic and I were THRILLED at the turn out (as I know others were as well..and the 72nd Pct. was mighty impressed..as was a beat reporter from the NY Post who attended).

The meeting was a well spent two hours of discussion with the Pct. and among the neighbors as to what one neighbor coined "very unique blocks" due to the proximity to Con Edison's sub station on 23rd St. between 5th and 6th Aves and Green-Wood on 23rd St. between 6th and 7th Aves.

The overall discussion with the 72nd Pct. was FIRST: the smaller quality of life issues (drugs/drinking via "park & party," public sex, vagrancy) SECOND: leading to larger criminal issues (drug dealing, prostitution, dumping, car break ins). Another resident offered the concept the need of the Pct. to have a omnipresence on our "unique blocks."

Dept. Sup. Pintos agreed that a "fresh look" at our blocks was needed and that police presence would be improved, starting with Tuesday evening (he was on 23rd St. after he left the meeting).

Since then the Pct. has had cars on the blocks several time a day to see what the "traffic" is like as we discussed the various issues (including ticketing the church bus on 23rd St. between 6th and 7th that has been illegally parked for almost a week).

We ended the discussion with a strategy on how to curb the illegal dumping on the blocks (partially by some improved house cleaning by residents, Green-Wood and DSNY) and the possibility of participating in the Neighborhood Watch program which is coming back online in November.

Topics that came up after the 72nd Pct. left were:

>Dog poop issues (Green-Wood will be placing signs on their fences, the community needs to "educate" our dog owners)
>Contacting Parks about new trees next to Con Ed and Green-Wood (many are dead along Green-Wood)
>Noise (car services honking, idling cars, speeding traffic, truck traffic)
>Public urination

We'll have CB7 reach out to the proper agencies to address those concerns.

Finally there was interest in setting up a neighborhood association (loosely or officially) for our two blocks. I am looking into that and the first step will be to set up a newsgroup for the neighborhood (not utilizing any condo news group or the CCGH newsgroup).

I would love to get folks thoughts on all of this and if there we any issues we did not cover at the meeting, which can be shared in a future e-mail. I'm compiling a list of e-mail addresses from what I currently have and from the meeting, so sorry upfront if you get a duplicate e-mail.