Tag: Drug Treatment Facilities

Posted on by — 1 Comment

DA Seth Williams And Absentee Landlord Among Presenters At Tonight’s Civic Meeting

A standing room crowd showed up for a full agenda at tonight’s Frankford Civic meeting.  DA Seth Williams stopped by to discuss his office’s new iniative of assigning his assistant district attorneys to geographic areas.  He feels that this will allow them to better understand and relate to the needs of the community.  Sounds kinda like the police departments PSAs.  Here’s video of Seth talking about Frankford’s issues.

Also at the meeting, Jason Dawkins from counsel-woman Sanchez’s office spoke:

  • of her reservations about the obesity tax pending in counsel stating that coming from retail and small business, she was concerned about increased taxes hurt small business.
  • He also talked about Smedley school at Bridge and Charles Streets becoming a Renaissance school.  The plan proposes to turn around about 30 schools over the next three years by bringing in new leadership from education management organizations (EMOs), charter schools, or teams of District educators.
  • Spoke again of the city’s “Spring Into Your Park” cleanup scheduled for April 10th.  He has to possible projects and are looking for input
  • He’s got recycle bins, get into contact with him if you need one
  • tomorrow at Sankofa Freedom Academy at 1 pm, they have their rescheduled Black History Month presentation
  • THEY ARE PLANNING FOLLOWUP STAKEHOLDERS AND TOWN HALL MEETINGS ABOUT THE HALFWAY/DRUG HOUSE TASK FORCE! Remember the last one?  It was a year ago and apparently there’s been some steady progress.  No firm date has been set.

Carla Sastio came in to talk more about Philadelphia’s Recycling Rewards.

The business owner of 4102 Paul Street, sitting at the corner of Torresdale and Paul St, came in because he’s seeking a zoning for retail sales of aftermarket wheels and tires.  The place is currently zoned commercial but because he wants to be able to take the tires off of cars, it has to be zoned as auto repair.  There were concerns over where he would be storing all the tires after another tire joint burned down two of it’s neighboring houses.  His zoning hearing is March 9th at 2:30 pm.

The owner of 1715 Harrison Street came in looking to get zoning to convert it from a 2 family home to a 3 family home.  He stated he lives in New York and that he’s owned up to 100 properties in Philadelphia at one time.  He admitted to having one outstanding L&I violation for having key locks on every room which usually means its a being used as a boarding house.  He said 5 people were living there now.  The owner left after his presentation.  Later on Pete Specos spoke of taking 3 weeks and 4 letters to get into contact with the owner, and that there were 3 or 4 violations on the property.  He also said all three floors of the house were occupied and that when he went to the location, it was a “pig pen”.

Posted on by — 5 Comments

Northwood Civic Meeting Centers On Lawsuits

Update:  Neast Philly also covered last night’s meeting.

Last night’s Northwood Civic Association meeting was a well attended one, by my count upwards of 30 people were there.  Among other business, two motions were passed unanimously allowing the civic to file lawsuits.  A suit in orphan’s court will be filed against the New Frankford Community Y to force them to open up their finances.  Civic president Barry Howell said that on several occasions the NFCY director Terry Toben has declined to explain where the money for the Y has been going for the last ten years.  George Santana, Tony Payton’s chief of staff, expressed frustration at not knowing who was on the board of directors, and said they may find very interesting things should the books be opened up.  There’s been a dispute over the possible sale of the Y to private investors with the the civic concerned it might be turned into a disco or or club.  The civic is very interested in keeping the property maintained as a community center and expressed frustration that several church groups have shown interest in the past without any follow through.

Another motion was carried allowing the civic to move forward with a suit in common pleas court against Volunteers of America for opening up a group rehab in a house at 4871 Roosevelt Blvd, inside Northwood’s deed restricted land.  “I don’t care what they call it” Howell said, “it’s a halfway house to me.”  He vowed to fight, saying that VOA has stopped any discussion with the civic.  Tony Payton was there and expressed strong support for the civic’s work to fight the incroachment.  Howell said Payton “really stepped up to the plate.”

Representatives from Juniata and Frankford civic associations were also at the meeting to show support for the halfway house/rehab situation that is affecting Frankford, Juniata and Northwood.  Howell said Northwood has laid back for years and it’s time to step up and take action.  He looked forward to a joint initiative between the three neighborhoods to engage local government to get their voices heard.  He spoke of petitions, and bussing people down to city hall to protest.  “Any politician that doesn’t work with us, we’ll work to remove them,” Howell said.

Other items included:

  • A petition was circulated in favor of traffic lights at Horrocks and Oxford, Howell says there were four accidents in the last year and possibly one fatality
  • The war monument plaque at Frankford Field at Large and Oxford fell down last Sunday.  A representative from the school board came and picked it up to make sure it wasn’t stolen.  Howell said they need to stay on top of them to make sure it’s put back up and not forgotten about in a closet for the next 50 years.  Questions were raised as to what organization actually owned it.
  • Jason Dawkins from Counselwoman Sanchez’ office noted there is going to be a meeting for the city’s small parks initiative(parks without buildings), at the Second Baptist Church at 1801 Meadow St on February 22nd at 6pm.  They’re looking for volunteers to help clean up the city’s small parks, including Wilmot and Overington Parks for the mayor’s Park Cleanup Day
  • Tony Payton was there looking for any residents in his district that would sign his petition to get on this May’s ballot.
  • A seargent with the 15th district talked about the new PSA(police service areas)
  • At the end of the meeting lurched into a debacle centered on whether it’s appropriate to save your parking space in a snowstorm.  The police at the meeting affirmed that it is against ordinance to save parking spaces, but you may have neighbor issues if you take their space
  • A census representative spoke about how important it is that Frankford’s residents are counted in the upcoming census.  He spoke about the many federally funded things that are allocated based on population including education and health care and said that for every person not counted in Philadelphia, the city looses out on something around 4000 dollars.  He said that community block grants are given out based on population which means the money given to our CDC is at stake.
  • The zoning issue at 950 Fillmore St will be held over to another time
Posted on by

Zoning in Frankford

Zoning for most of us is not an exciting topic. However, Philadelphia is in the midst of rewriting the zoning code and this presents new opportunities for correcting past wrongs. Why is it that we have to put up with a recovery house on every block in Frankford? Because there are few legal ways to prevent it. The zoning code, as it is now, allows it. The Frankford Civic has been monitoring this issue and has submitted a letter below to the Zoning Code Commission. Click here to read the letter.

We are hoping that the Northwood Civic will support this effort with a similar letter.

Posted on by — 15 Comments

First Anniversary of the Frankford Town Hall Meeting

Last Wednesday was the first anniversary of  the town hall meeting called by councilperson Maria Quinones-Sanchez.  It was held at St. Joachims on February 3, of 2009 and caused quite a stir at the time.  You may remember that the subject was the recovery house problem in Frankford.  The problem being that there is an overabundance of recovery houses in our neighborhood.   We have been told that this is a difficult problem to solve.  It may be but how do we know.  We haven’t had any official communication from the Councilperson.  We haven’t had any news.

This is not to say that nothing has happened down at City Hall.   What we were promised, is a return to our community of the people involved in that meeting to report on what was going to be done.  We need to know what has been done and what will be done in the future to address this problem. A year is long enough.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Frankford Civic Association Meeting

The meeting last night on the second floor at Aria Health was well attended despite the cold temperatures.

First issue on the agenda was a zoning issue regarding a house owned by Pastor Richard Smith of the Faith Assembly of God.  He is seeking to renew his zoning variance on a property at 1930 Harrison Street to house up to eight men.  A number of people from the congregation attended and there was testimony at the meeting of the pastor’s dedication to helping men in need.

Another zoning issue was related to the application to build a storage facility for a contractor at 4205-07 Adams Avenue.  This applicant appeared at a previous meeting and the project is moving along.

In regard to the possible sale of the now vacant Frankford Community Y building, Jason Dawkins of Ms. Sanchez staff reports that the issue is still on the table but the attorney for the parties involved say that funding is still not in place.  That was the reason why they did not appear at the last Civic meeting.

The issue of the sale of the Salvation Army building has been reported and there has been no change in status.  It is significant to note that the Pols offices are both taking a proactive stance in trying to make sure that any sale that does take place will be in the best interests of the community.

The big news at the meeting was revealed by Barry Howell, president of the Northwood Civic Association.  He announced that Community Behavioral Health, contracted by the City of Philadelphia, is opening up a recovery house at 4871 Roosevelt Boulevard.  This would violate the Burk deed restriction which prohibits use of the property for anything other than a single family residence.

So now the city government has turned on us.  The city where you pay taxes is going to war against us.

Barry requested that someone from Frankford Civic attend the Northwood Civic meetings in the future.  This fight will require a coordinated  effort by by both Civics.  Why is this important when there are so many other recovery houses in Frankford?  Because there are so many recovery houses in Frankford. There are far more than the number of people in Frankford needing those services.

It’s time again to stand together and so no more.   Check out the report on NEastPhilly.com.