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Philly School District Embraces the Weeds

It has been years since the first neighbor on the 2000 block of Margaret Street came to the Frankford Civic Association meeting and complained about the maintenance of the Harding Middle School property on the Margaret Street side.

The School District mows the grass and keeps the weeds off the sidewalk on the property near the school but on that big section of the property closest to Margaret Street, it looks like a dump.  On the Ditman Street side you can barely walk on the sidewalk for the weeds that block the passage.  On the Margaret side, passersby are greeted by weeds on the lot that are three feet high or more.

In August when the neighbors on Margaret Street had a block party they cut the weeds on the lot closest to Margaret in order to make it look a little better.  They have made numerous complaints to 311 and nothing changes.

The most recent 311 case number was 10879517.  According to 311 records, an inspection was made on August 31st and a violation notice was issued.  A re-inspection was made on September 13th where no improvement was noted.  An inspection was made on September 23rd and the case was closed.  This would indicate that the problem was resolved however as you can see from the video below that these weeds did not grow this high in the last 2 weeks.

Do you think this would go on if this was private property?

 

When we finished the draft of this story we sent it over to the School District for comment and got an email back on Wednesday from Kevin Geary, Chief of External Relations who said ”

Thank you for sending this. We were closed yesterday due to the Jewish new year.

We will clear sidewalk and cut field today. Our field attendant has been out sick for 4 weeks…

Background: Our field attendant has been out sick for 4 weeks. Our supervisor should have caught and shifted resources but did not.

We went out to have a look on Saturday and true to his word, well take a look at the video below.

In Spring we’ll check back to see if is being maintained.  Thanks Kevin Geary for your help.