Bella Vista 19147

Because this is a very busy stretch with two bus stops close together as well as two convenience stores, there is a small river of litter that flows down the west-side sidewalk and in the gutters. Many of the residences are apartment buildings, there are a couple of restaurants, and many elderly. No one picks up the litter. It's disgusting.

The owners of this land (Carl's Poultry, who also operate a low-cost poultry shop across the street) have let this vacant property (in the heart of the Italian Markets) turn into an open dump. There is a graffiti covered dumpster sitting in this lot and it is surrounded by trash piling up. When asked to remove the trash a few years ago, they simply put tarps over it.

Now others are dumping here. The "green" fence is often covered with graffiti, and it's been this way for years.

Efforts from neighbors a few years ago halted a zoning variance to allow yet more construction by property owner. Why? Because the property owner, owns other abandoned/blighted properties on the 800 block of League Street. The fork lifts from his "warehouses" on League are constantly blocking traffic, not to mention the stench from the "cleaning" of kitchen equipment in the street. (But that's an entirely different topic. Health code violations?)

Be a good neighbor - CLEAN IT UP.

There is a tow truck for Alex's Auto Body routinely parking overnight, starting around 4pm on the SW corner of 10th and Carpenter, in a No Parking zone. It is never ticketed, and frustrates others who park legally. To add, it is becoming an eyesore to the otherwise nice block along the park.

This large new construction has a garage and a curb cut. There is a space between it's garage and the neighbor's garage that is large enough to park a car in. Recently, they left a note on my neighbor's car saying that it is inconvenient for them to turn into their garage when a car is parked between the garages. He knocked on their door several times to talk about this, but they have not answered. After he moved his car, they took it upon themselves to spraypaint a large no parking X on this space. This is another co-opting of public space for private use, and they should at the very least be made to remove it. The rest of the nighborhood parallel parks their cars on the street, a very small inconvenience we happily put up with. For this house to pull a three point turn around a parked car into their garage is a small thing to ask.

We have a trash problem on 10th Street, there is no denying that. We have sent letters to the Christ United Presbyterian Church specifically asking them to keep the front of their building litter free. Over the holidays neighbors removed a huge bag of trash from the front of the church alone. A letter was sent to the church director saying, "We cleaned up your property. Now it's your turn." Yeah, and nothing changed. All of the neighbors in our neighborhood work together to keep the litter in check. Except a few properties. This church is one of them.

Update April 2012: Still no effort is made by the church. During a recent neighborhood clean-up day we removed BAGS of trash and weeded the tree beds out front.