Community Board 7 had a quality-of-life hearing last week at Our Lady of Refuge Church and too few people came. If you don’t include members of the board, elected officials and police, there were probably only about 10 residents there.
This, sadly, is not surprising given how often people complain about community problems to no avail and then give up. Nevertheless, as others have noted, showing up is most of the battle. So we want to highlight what the people who actually showed up think about quality-of-life issues.
The top issues people felt the community needs to work on were: noise; drug dealing in the streets; outdoor drinking; illegal clubs; and dog droppings.
Please note the emphasis above on “community needs to work on.” For those who haven’t noticed, Glenda the Good Witch is not flying in from Oz to solve these problems, nor is Mayor Bloomberg or anybody else.
Improving quality of life is essentially the mission of this newspaper and the organization that publishes it – Mosholu Preservation Corporation. The last time we were involved in a meeting about quality-of-life issues, dog owners not cleaning up after their pets was tops on the list of complaints. Since then, we have initiated a Cut the Crap campaign with help from Bedford Mosholu Community Association, Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, as well as merchants, landlords and dog owners. We think it has made a difference.
So, if the dog droppings are going to stop appearing on the bottoms of our shoes, we have to fix the problem ourselves. For our part, we have purchased signs to gently remind people as well as dogipot dispensers and plastic bags in case a dog owner needs them. And there are dog runs now on the Norwood side of Van Cortlandt Park and in Williamsbridge Oval, largely thanks to the Friends groups in those parks. We think things are better in local parks — not all better, but better. We promise to redouble our efforts.
If all of us are to make an effort on other issues, we need to decide what they are. Community Board 7 is off to a great start by organizing the quality-of-life hearing. Let us know if you agree with those who showed up. What quality-of-life problems are important to you? Once we know, we will report on ways we can all work to solve them.
Please write to us (e-mail norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org) or comment on the blog (www.bronxnewsnetwork.org).
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.