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How to Apply for Street Trees & Sidewalks

How to Apply for Street Trees & Sidewalks

Of all the questions posed to the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council, some of the most common ones concern street trees and sidewalks. How do you get them if your house doesn’t already have them? How do you go about dealing with old/diseased/overgrown trees or repairing cracked/uneven sidewalks?

Both are projects that must be dealt with on the city level. The EGNC (like all neighborhood councils across Spokane) acts as an intermediary in many of these cases by helping you formulate your request in the right way and bringing your project to city’s attention.

For street trees, you can download this work order form (Word .doc), fill out the required fields, and submit it to the address provided. Our neighborhood council allocates a certain amount of funding for street trees every year, so if they are made aware of your request, they can try to ensure that there are sufficient funds.

If sidewalks are your concern, your best bet is to come to the next neighborhood council meeting (typically the second Wednesday of each month; see the calendar) and speak directly with the people who handle sidewalk installation and repair requests for the neighborhood.

Every spring, missing or defective sidewalks are documented by our neighborhood on a map provided by the city’s Engineering Department. Areas in need of new or repaired sidewalks are highlighted with marker pens on the map.

In recent years a small group has also walked the neighborhood and identified addresses that are in need of new or repaired sidewalks. These addresses are added to the map as well, and the whole thing is submitted back to the Engineering Department in late spring.

The city’s combined neighborhood sidewalk contract (in the $500,000 ballpark) goes out for bid and is awarded in early summer. If desired, the chosen contractor then walks the areas indicated on the map with the neighborhood rep to talk about the work to be done. Construction occurs in the late summer and early autumn. (And, yes, it does happen.)

If you have any other questions about sidewalks, streets trees, or neighborhood-related issues in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch using our contact page.

Neighborhood Council Meeting Recap (Pt. 2)

Neighborhood Council Meeting Recap (Pt. 2)

Two weeks ago, we said we would be posting the second part of our recap — to include “recent crime hotspots, park improvements, a forthcoming mailer, and this year’s snow plow protocol” — the next day. That clearly didn’t happen. As is so often the case, day jobs and holidays had to take priority over blogging.

So, without further delay, let’s address those topics.

At this time of year, there is crime all over Emerson-Garfield — and indeed Spokane. Thieves take advantage of the reduced daylight hours and the holiday shopping frenzy. They will steal bikes, tools, toys, lawn ornaments, wiring, pets, children, old mattresses, rocks… in short, anything that’s not bolted to the floor of an underground steel bunker surrounded by a magical forcefield. And they will take your stuff to pawn shops or flea markets (not always locally) or try to hawk it online on Craigslist or eBay.

At November’s Neighborhood Council meeting, we heard from police that thieves were prowling alleyways in Emerson-Garfield and taking bolt cutters to garage padlocks. Your only real defense against this is increased vigilance. This means getting to know your neighbors, keeping an eye out on their behalf (and vice versa), and perhaps installing a video surveillance system or a motion-sensor light.

They’re also driving off with mid-’90s Hondas, since it’s easy to used shaved keys to jimmy their locks. (Good news? There’s apparently a fairly high recovery rate for stolen vehicles.) Any cars they can’t steal outright are targets for break-ins. If something that could be considered to be of any value is in sight, thieves will smash the window to get to it.

What else can you do, besides despair?

  • Hide or remove anything of value. Take your iPod charger inside with you. Don’t leave CDs, cassettes, or even 8-tracks on the front seat. Stow that ashtray full of parking-meter change.
  • If possible, note the serial number of the item. All pawn shops in the area have to upload the serial numbers of incoming items into a database every night. The police then cross-reference this database with reported stolen goods.
  • Report the stolen item. This is essential. Even if you think there isn’t much chance of getting your stolen item back, or that the police don’t care, it’s important that you at least try. If the police don’t know of the theft, they can’t investigate it. And if they also don’t know where thefts are occurring, they can’t assign any of their limited resources to that area.

As for park improvements: The new swingset is ready to be installed in Emerson Park. It might have to wait until spring. At any rate, it will bring a much-needed feature to the traditionally more neglected of Emerson-Garfield’s two parks. Corbin will also be getting a swingset, as previously noted here.

Both Corbin and Emerson now have electrical drop-boxes — which means the ability to hold concerts, movie nights, and all sorts of entertainment. Now all that’s needed is the people to make those events happen.

The neighborhood is looking to send out a print mailer in the near future. Here are some of the suggestions for what it should contain:

  • Sign up for e-mail newsletter
  • Invite to annual holiday potluck (Dec 12)
  • General news about the EGNC
  • Call for video submissions (for a proposed neighborhood movie)
  • Neighborhood survey
  • Call for sidewalk, trees and street improvement requests
  • Alert residents and business of this website
  • Plowing information

If you have any of your own suggestions about what you’d like to see on the mailer, please leave a comment or get in touch.

On the subject of the last of those bullet points, there’s a snow plowing protocol. Although most people ignore it, it still exists. And there’s every indication that the city is getting fed up with folks who flout that protocol — which means, among other things, that your car will be towed away at your expense.

During even years, park your car on the even (usually north or east) side of the streets when plowing is taking place. During odd years, park your car on the odd (usually south or west) side of the street. Opt to ignore it and you risk a $200 ticket and/or towing and/or the plow driver taking justifiable pleasure in trapping your car within a fortress of plowed snow and ice that will not melt until spring.

Despite the busy holiday season and year-end workload, we’ll try to have regular news and event updates. Most important among them: the annual holiday potluck on Wednesday, December 12. It’s at Corbin Senior Center and will start at 7pm. Mark your calendars!

Neighborhood Council Meeting Recap

Neighborhood Council Meeting Recap

Last night’s Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council meeting was one of the more satisfying ones. That’s because it was the one where we decide how to allot the Community Development funds (since that’s a term that keeps cropping up, we’ll soon have an explanatory post on what CD funding is and why it’s so important).

A small volunteer group of council members met prior to the neighborhood council meeting to review funding applicants. From a list of 28 organizations with 39 separate requests for service funding, the actual recommendations were narrowed down to six. Those were decided on some basic criteria:

  • Did Emerson-Garfield fund the organization last year?
  • What is the organization’s stated reason for applying for funding?
  • Does the organization have a physical location in our neighborhood? Or is it at least active there in some form?
  • Has a representative of the organization ever attended an EGNC meeting to personally “pitch” the funding request and field questions from the public?
  • Does the organization have access to additional funding sources beyond E-G’s Community Development funds?
  • Will the organization’s services directly benefit residents of our neighborhood?

On the basis of those criteria, the following six organizations were put forward and later approved by all voting members of the EGNC:

These organizations will receive letters of recommendation on behalf of the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council to be granted all or part of their funding request. (In previous years, the neighborhood council used to exercise almost complete control over funding recipients, but that process has changed this year to save administrative costs.)

From a separate pot of capital funding, the EGNC allotted the following amounts for the following purposes:

  • $2,600 to Corbin Senior Center for repairing a parking lot entrance and miscellaneous improvements like heat tape
  • $20,000 for sidewalks — which receives 1:1 matching funds from the city, therefore a total of $40,000 will be available for sidewalk installation and repair throughout E-G in 2013
  • $34,650 for home rehabilitation — which receives 3:1 matching funds from the city, therefore $103,950 will be available for initiatives like SNAP and Lead Safe Spokane throughout E-G in 2013

A representative of the City of Spokane’s Community, Housing and Human Services Department was on hand to answer our questions about funding procedures and possibilities. During the discussion about apportioning of funds, he informed us that we still have $17,000 remaining in unallocated funds for street tree removal and replanting.

New this year in the CD funding process is an additional $100,000 general pot. All neighborhoods are allowed to submit project applications for part or all of this money. After some discussion on whether or not the looming deadline (December 6) was feasible, the EGNC decided to put forward its own application for a covered bus shelter on the southbound corner of Monroe and Montgomery.

Other project ideas included a dog park, a pedestrian crossing at Grace and Monroe, and a picnic pavilion in Corbin Park. All of these were seriously considered, but voting members decided unanimously to concentrate on a single project so that it stood a better chance of being approved. It’s likely that all these ideas will be revisited in the future.

Also discussed at the meeting: recent crime hotspots, park improvements, a forthcoming mailer, and this year’s snow plow protocol. These will all be covered in a second post tomorrow (because this one’s getting awfully long).

If you are a resident of Emerson-Garfield and would like to apply for street tree planting/removal or sidewalk installation/repair, we will soon have posts that describe how to do that and that will provide the relevant forms. Please stay tuned.

Leaf Pickup on Nov. 11, 12, 18-20

Leaf Pickup on Nov. 11, 12, 18-20

City crews will be conducting leaf pickup on the west side of Emerson-Garfield (i.e., west of N. Monroe) on Sunday, November 11 and Monday, November 12, and on the east side of Emerson-Garfield (i.e., east of N. Monroe) from Sunday, November 18 through Tuesday, November 20. Pickup will take place on all those days between 6am and 10pm.

Leaf pickup means that the crews will be coming around with giant vacuum-type contraptions that suck up all the mucky leaves that have collected at the curb in front of your house. This makes winter snow removal easier and allows all the autumn rain and melted snow to drain more easily. It’s a good thing.

Two things to keep in mind:

  • Don’t rake leaves from your yard into the street! It’s tempting, we know, but excess leaves will overburden the crews and their machines. Use your green bin instead (collection for that continues until Nov. 30) or start a compost bin in your yard.
  • Don’t park on the street on leaf pickup days. Crews can’t vacuum leaves out from under vehicles. The inconvenience of parking in the alley or your garage for a few days will, we hope, be outweighed by the improvements to snow removal and storm drainage.

The full citywide leaf pickup schedule is available here (PDF link). More info on leaf pickup can be found here.

Materials for the Nov. 14 EGNC Meeting

Materials for the Nov. 14 EGNC Meeting

We’ve just posted the minutes (often imitated, never duplicated) from the October 10 meeting as well as the agenda for the upcoming November 14 meeting. Get ’em here:

We’re still waiting on confirmation that this month’s Neighborhood Planning meeting will take place as usual. As stakeholders and attendees of last month’s neighborhood meetings will know, E.J. Iannelli has stepped down as planning manager for a variety of reasons (some of which are noted in the above minutes); Jay Cousins has stepped up to fill the role.

As always, the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council meeting will start at 6pm at the Corbin Senior Center. We’ll be discussing how to allocate the approximately $57k in funding that the neighborhood will be receiving as part of the Community Development Block Grant in 2013. The process and stipulations for CDBG funding have changed this year, and there are a number of issues to address if we want to ensure that Emerson-Garfield sees the same (or greater) level of attention as in years past.

One of the big changes is that much of next year’s CD funding is designed to be used for capital projects (i.e., bricks and mortar). Some examples of what other neighborhoods have done — as well as some of the facts and figures behind 2013 CDBG funding — are outlined in the previous post.

And remember: the neighborhood council isn’t a cabal of insiders. It’s open to everyone and anyone who wants to attend. Please come to find out what’s going on and help shape Emerson-Garfield for the better.