SAMBA: "Beauty is good for business"

[sheclown]

An amazing turnout at the "Reclaim Main Street" event this morning.  Well over 100 people showed up to record the city's blight on public property in Springfield.



Volunteers were assigned zones to cover and walked through taking pictures of broken sidewalks, rusty fire hydrants, graffiti-covered street signs, stumps and dead trees throughout the historic district.

No pictures or notes were taken regarding private property.

This was all in an effort to get the city to take its fair share of responsibility for correcting its blight.

Hats off to Christina Parrish and Catherine Banschbach for organizing this event with the city, with Well's Fargo.

And BTW, CM Bill Bishop was volunteering today as well!



It was heart-warming to see all of the support from all the different groups of the city and of the neighborhood, SAMBA and SPAR did a great job organizing it.

[Miss Fixit]

The turnout for this event exceeded our wildest expectations - can't wait to share photos with Mayor Brown at Monday's Urban Core CPAC meeting!

City Beautiful Jacksonville ("CBJ") and Wells Fargo were great partners.  Springfield was the pilot neighborhood for a program - the "Neighborhood Inventory of Visual Pollution" - that CBJ hopes to repeat throughout Jacksonville.   For more information, go to

http://citybeautifuljax.org/

[Bill Hoff]

Here's an article in the TU about the effort:

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-06-02/story/volunteers-prowl-visual-blight-springfield

I'm glad to have had the opprotunity to participate.

[Miss Fixit]

Love the coverage in the paper, and the participation of Councilman Bill Bishop!

They sold us a little short:  we covered EVERY block from Boulevard to Ionia and 1st through 12th streets, which adds up to a lot more than just a "10-block-by-5-block" area!

[sheclown]

Every fire hydrant I saw is rusty and could use paint.



Perhaps they ought to be condemned.

[Bill Hoff]

[sheclown]

Instead of dealing with its own issues, the city is taking precious resources to do what...tell everyone to mow their grass? 

Some of us want to remind the city of its obligation to clean up their side of the street.  Or to put it better....

Unblight this...

We've been waiting for years now.  The rolling fines against you, COJ, are mounting.

[avs]

Yes, there is a LOT of tax money being wasted harassing tax paying citizens to cut their grass in these first warm weeks of the year.  Each Notice also triggers a certified letter that costs the city $5.13 to send!  Not to mention the man hours!  1/5 of the City's Code officers were concentrated in a 1 mile area for over two weeks!  This is a tremendous waste of our tax money that could be used for the city to clean up IT'S own blight - which is everywhere!

[mbwright]

how about posting yellow notices on the cities properties.....

[sheclown]

how about posting yellow notices on the cities properties.....

Funny thing is that code does indeed cite city owned props. Only city rarely does anything about it.

[Dog Walker]

JEA is very responsive about painting the rusting hydrants when a resident sends in a complaint.

[strider]

To be honest, there are city owned properties in Springfield that meet or exceed the citation criteria on a regular basis.  At least two city owned properties in the area most likely would have been subjected to rolling fines by now if owned by a regular old citizen.

And I have not seen the city paint any hydrants in Springfield lately but didn't they give someone a hard time for painting one themselves not too long ago?

[JaxUnicorn]

JEA is very responsive about painting the rusting hydrants when a resident sends in a complaint.

are fire hydrants the responsibility of JEA or the City of Jacksonville?

[sheclown]

Jea is the city.

[Scrub Palmetto]

This is really cool! I love it. It makes me want to refer to the "broken windows theory" as the "broken sidewalks theory" from now on.