Residents at the Waverly Farms and Villas and Cherry Creek Apartments are through complaining about the gang-bangers who’ve been messing with what should be a safe and pleasant summer.

With the help of Safe Streets’ Darren Pen, they’ve organized.

Tonight, they’re inaugurating the push with their first National Night Out.
Their complexes are among several east of Interstate 5 and north of South 96th Street, and they have a unique problem. Though most of their neighborhood is in Tacoma, they also have an orphan slice of Lakewood, across the freeway from the rest of the city.

Their management is responsible, responsive and tight with the police, but that’s not the case in all the complexes. Some allow gang members to live and do business in the neighborhood.

Residents have had armed thugs bust into their apartments. They’ve had taggers dueling with spray-paint on their fences. And you don’t want to know what’s been going on in the greenbelt.

Now that they’ve organized, Tacoma Police Community Liaison Officer Dan Hensley is looking into their complaints of slow police response. He’s given them resource lists of all the numbers to call, and coached them on how best to report a crime.

Jim Borah of the Neighborhood Councils is helping them with information on how to get traffic circles and speed bumps.

The core group invited the neighbors, including residents of the Woodmark Apartments, or a Safe Streets meeting two weeks ago.

“This whole neighborhood is so unsavory, it’s just pathetic,” said a Woodmark resident. “We had a shoot-out up here today at 3 p.m.”

They had another last Thursday.

This National Night Out Party is serious business. Lives depend on it.

Here's a few more details about an event that I briefed in the paper version of The News Tribune earlier this week:

Organizers are hoping 1,500 volunteers young and old will show up to tidy up Tacoma’s Eastside this Saturday (May 2).

Already, 1,200 students, families and other community members have signed up to clean around schools and along safe walking routes to schools from 9 a.m. to noon in the 2009 Eastside Clean Sweep project, according to a Tacoma School District news release.

Four St. Vincent DePaul trucks will be stationed throughout the Eastside community to collect used furniture and other salvageable donations. After the clean-up, Clean Sweep participants can enjoy a free barbeque, family activities and entertainment at a community celebration and awards ceremony 12:30 to 2 p.m. at Stewart Middle School, 5010 Pacific Ave.

Schools participating in the clean-up include: Boze, Blix, Fawcett, Lister, Lyon, McKinley, Roosevelt and Sheridan elementary schools; Gault, McIlvaigh and Stewart middle schools and Lincoln High School.

A high school student from the Division 34 Kiwanis and Key Club has collected nearly 2,000 children books that will be distributed at the event.

The Clean Sweep planning committee includes the Tacoma Public Schools, First Creek Neighbors, Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma Housing Authority, City of Tacoma, Boys and Girls Club, Kids at Hope, Safe Streets and the Puyallup Tribe.

The clean-up is supported with a $5,000 grant from the Eastside Neighborhood Advisory Council (ENACT) and another $5,000 from the Puyallup Tribe. For more information or to volunteer, contact Kate Frazier at 253-571-1347.

Debby Abe, The News Tribune

Tonight's the big night for South End and East Side residents who've yearned for celebrity treatment from the City of Tacoma.

The city will roll out its Community Based Services program at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 22,at Stewart Middle School, 5010 Pacific Ave. The new CBS area will stretch from Interstate 5 to 68th Street between Sheridan and McKinley avenues.

Tacoma Police community liaison officers Don Williams and Bert Hayes have been spreading the word (and the e-mails, and the flyers) that everyone is welcome to come and help set the program's priorities.

The CBS program aims to cut crime and blight and to encourage residents' involvement. To do that, it dedicates a community liaison officer, a code enforcement officer and a program development specialist to the neighborhood.

It promises residents "full support from the City of Tacoma as a whole."

City officials will be there this evening to listen to the problems that most concern residents. Street repairs? Gangs? Drug houses? Overgrown lots? Dangerous dogs? Speeders? Burglaries? Noise? Tagging?

The aim is to set preliminary priorities, and to give people the tools to join the partnership.

One more incentive: There will be snacks.

Lincoln High School senior Christney Kpodo was honored by Gov. Chris Gregoire as Washington State Youth of the Year in a ceremony this morning at the Governor's Mansion in Olympia.

We introduced you to 17-year-old Kpodo in a TNT article last month, after she was named Youth of the Year for the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound.

She then went on to face 13 other Boys & Girls Club members from across the state Thursday at Qwest Field in Seattle where, instead of soccer balls and footballs, the competitors were tested in rounds of interviews and speechmaking in front of a panel of judges. Later that evening, all 14 finalists gave their speeches one last time in front of family, friends, Boys & Girls Club staff and supporters.

Not until this morning did Kpodo find out, in front of an audience of state VIPs, that she was the statewide winner. She was presented a $1,000 scholarship from the Reader’s Digest Foundation and $1,000 from the Washington State Alliance of the Boys & Girls Clubs. All told, she has received $5,500 in scholarship money since the process began.

Kpodo is a four-year member of the Boys & Girl South End Branch in Tacoma. She has completed 600 volunteer hours, organized many community service projects and received the Gates Achievers Scholarship Award for her academic success and extracurricular involvement. She plans to attend Pacific Lutheran University and work toward a law degree.

Next up she will represent Washington at the regional level, with a berth in the national competition in Washington, D.C. at stake.

Kpodo told the TNT last month that she credits a strong Christian faith as well as perseverance gained after a serious ankle injury about four years ago led to eight surgeries and other procedures.

"I believe the Boys & Girls Club is what gave me the confidence to speak out and to be comfortable in my own skin," Kpodo told a TNT reporter.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound benefits 13,150 children and teens at eight branches and 14 outreach sites in Pierce, Mason, and Kitsap counties. For more information, call (253) 502-4600 or go to the organization's website.

An application to build a cell phone tower near the corner of South 48th Street and Yakima Avenue is on hold following the discovery of another tower nearby.

The application, which is opposed by the South End Neighborhood Council, was placed on hold March 2, said Charla Heutinck, land use administration planner for the city.

The applicant, T-Mobile, must provide the city with a technical reason why the new tower cannot be co-located with the existing tower at 4818 South J Street, Heutinck said.

If the city has not heard from T-Mobile after 120 days, officials may close out the application, Heutinck said. So far, the city has not heard from T-Mobile, she said Thursday.

The South End Neighborhood Council objects to the location of the proposed tower in an empty lot next to the old Superior TV building, 4638 S. Yakima Ave., arguing that it poses a potential health risk because at 59-feet 11-inches it would not be tall enough to clear some of the surrounding homes.

=> Read more!

Tacoma Public Utilities will be disposing of nine lots it no longer needs for substations.

According to state law and the city charter, they have to be sold if they're no longer playing the electricity game. The question is, should they be sold to private parties, or to a government agency that will preserve them as public lands.

Morgan Alexander has been harnessing the power of the gardening community to preserve some of the suitable lots as pocket parks or community gardens.

Who knows? Some of them might work as solar demonstration projects, combining solar panels with rows of beets and peas. If the panels feed into the grid, that might make it possible to preserve them as TPU property, and uncomplicate the process?

Alexander is making progress. Already, he is on the agenda for the Metro Parks Board meeting Monday, March 9 at 6pm, Metro headquarters: 4702 S 19th St.

Here's the list of surplus properties:

Adams, 1920 Adams St. N.

Centennial, 543 N. Stadium Way.

Downing, 1801 N. Orchard St.

Fairmont, 4924 N. 31st St.

Junett, 3008 N. 16th St.

Ruston, 5001 N. Visscher St.

Parkland, 101 127th St. E.

Warner, 3404 S. 45th St.

Lincoln Park, 1009 South 35th Street.

Eastsiders have come to love the sound of tow trucks in the morning.

They have been working with Tacoma Police Department Officer Don Williams to rid the neighborhood of illegal and decaying cars in all the wrong places.

They’ve alerted Williams to blocks clogged with cars on the planting strips, cars with grass growing in their wheel wells, cars with expired tabs, cars on lawns, cars on sidewalks, cars parked facing the wrong way. Williams checks off the pertinent violation on a form. He leaves the form on the windshield with a notice that, if the owner doesn’t move the car by a certain date, the city will do it, and send a bill.

The first time Williams went out, people thought it was a bluff.
Then big trucks towed 30-plus cars away.

The next few times around, owners dealt with the problem themselves, and the tow trucks hauled off half a dozen vehicles.
Now Tow Day is going city-wide.

Jeanie Peterson of Hilltop Action Coalition is inviting volunteers in Sector One, which includes Hilltop and the downtown, to get the training to hit the sidewalks for the program. The police will offer free training sessions the weekend of Dec. 6 and 7.

“The first training class for the 6th will begin at noon at the Sector One Substation, South 16th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and other trainings will happen throughout the day,” she said.
Tow Day will come to Sector One in time for the holidays, then cycle through Sectors Two and Three, then back to Four.

The hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours South Sounders invested in Tacoma's 2008 Tall Ships Festival paid off for the second time Saturday.

Mike McLeod of Tall Ships Tacoma's Board of Directors, accepted the award at the International Sail Training and Tall Ships Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Tacoma has taken part in the festival only twice, in 2005 and 2008. Both times it has won Port of the Year. This year, it outdid the cities of Victoria and Port Alberni in British Columbia and San Francisco, Oxnard, Los Angeles, San Diego and Dana Point in California. In 2005, it also bested Vancouver, B.C.

The Tall Ships Challenge cycles between the east and west coasts and the Great Lakes each three years.

Captains and crew members have the biggest say in who wins Port of the Year.

It matters to them that the city of Tacoma arranged to have their bilges pumped, that union electrical workers had safe power strung to their ships and that volunteers kept crowds controlled and docks secure. It matters to them that shoreside folks welcome them with warm smiles, shopping specials, and free internet service.

McLeod believes that Youth on Board, a program pioneered by Tall Ships and Metro Parks, impressed ASTA and the skippers. That program trained young people in seamanship and placed them on Tall Ships for the sail from Victoria to Tacoma. Later in the summer, half a dozen of those young people went to California to sail aboard USCG Barque Eagle.

"We were one of the few ports that really embraced the sail training opportunity," McLeod said. "I'm told that ASTA is using the program we developed as a model."

While Port of the Year is an honor, the volunteers' first payoff was a well-run festival that drew crowds of 400,000 to the Foss in July.

Organizers estimated that 2,000 volunteers invested tens of thousands of hours in the festival. They built docks, gathered sponsors, picked up trash, directed crowds, catered to crews, and after all the ships had sailed, they left the Thea Foss Waterway with about $1.5 to $2 million worth of improvements.

By MIKE ARCHBOLD
mike.archbold@thenewstribune.com

A state Liquor Control Board inspector made a second sweep today through a number of grocery stores in the new Alcohol Impact Area on Tacoma’s East Side and South End looking for illegal fortified alcohol wine and beer.

None of the 20 stores visited were found selling any of the 44 beverages banned in the week-old Alcohol Impact Area. Inspectors did find some of the products the storerooms of 13 stores and warned store owners to get rid of them immediately because even having them on the premises is illegal. Signs advertising the fortified beverages also must come down.

The AIA became effective Oct. 1 after a nearly 2 1/2 year effort by neighborhood groups to get it approved by the City of Tacoma and the state Liquor Control Board. It is the second such zone in the city that is aimed at reducing chronic public inebriation and its effects on neighborhoods.

“I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt,” said State Liquor Control
Board enforcement officer L. J. Sawyers as he left the Tacoma Police Zone 4 Station on McKinley Avenue about 11 a.m. for the store checks. “If they are selling product, they’re going to get a ticket. There is no excuse.”

=> Read more!

Interesting as the Safe Streets Super Stars meeting always is, the best part comes later. That’s when the several hundred people in the room, from police to bankers, get together to talk about their progress and projects.

Darren Pen, one of Safe Streets’ star organizers, had great news for Gia Casto and Iola Brown. They’s just earned honors for the work they’ve done organizing residents and merchants along Pacific Avenue from 46th to 56th streets. Gia had mentioned that she’d like to extend north to 38th Street.

Bingo, said Darren.

He and volunteers from the Lincoln LAWGs have been working on the same aim. Walgreen’s managers have gotten involved, and their example has drawn in several other businesses. Walgreen’s at 38th and Pacific will host an organizing meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11.

Everyone’s welcome to come and figure out how to fight the drug dealing and prostitution, and to put pressure on more businesses to step up to the effort.

Twelve neighborhood groups are staging an anti-crime march on Friday evening.

“The march has dual purposes: to send a message to criminals that residents are working together to eliminate illegal activity like drug dealing and prostitution, and to enhance people’s awareness of crime in both their own neighborhoods and the broader community,” said Safe Streets’ Moni Hoy.

Things should start about 5:30 p.m. and last about two hours.

All materials will be supplied by Safe Streets. Anyone is welcome to join.

Click below to see if there’s a march near you. Or if you’re anti-Google Maps, click on the link after the map to see a list and participating groups.

=> Read more!

Michelle Fields lives in the 8700 block of South Ainsworth. A block away, between South 86th and South 87 streets, the roadway has a score of 10 out of 100 in the City of Tacoma's database of street condition.

“It’s very annoying,” the 32-year-old said. “They’ve come and filled in some of these potholes, but it’s still pretty bumpy around here.”

South Cushman Avenue from South 39th to South 48th streets is in bad shape. The roadways are bumpy and pockmarked with potholes. With the exception of two blocks that the city recently paved, the entire stretch scored a zero. And that has one resident on the 4500 block, 52-year-old Jodi Newell, frustrated.

“It’s bad. It needs to be paved. Something needs to get done. And it will only get worse this winter,” she said. “And it’s our tax money. Where is it going?”

One block south, Carolyn Greer called the paving of her street “really, really nice.”

“It was pretty bad when they paved it,” the 48-year-old said. “It was about as bad as the rest of Cushman.”

Bernadette Clark lives on the 800 block of South 45th Street. The roadway in front of her house, rough and crumbling as it approaches the curb, scored a zero.

Clark said it used to bother her, but she has since learned to accept it.

“They’re in bad condition,” she said, “but it’s the price you pay for living in the city.”