There was a Go Long Beach Run through all of the MacArthur Park Neighborhood this morning.It found ten incidence of tagging/ nine were gang related. It found 14 incidents of of illegal dumping.There was also one street sign that should be replaced as well as a recommendation for an additional stop sign at Gardenia and 15th Street.
Two businesses were coded for failure to remove gang tagging.
The most important clear trend is that gang tagging is way up. Report it as soon as you see it.
This included the east end of the neighborhood. Dumping still clusters on Gaviota north of 17th. There is also a trend of dumping along Stanton north of 15th. Tagging trends up Walnut/ and Gaviota. There is also a newer trend of tagging and dumping along 17th Street between Walnut and Rose.
Eyes should be kept on Walnut/ Gaviota/ Stanton/ 17th Street and Alamitos based on what is seen here.
Neighborhood Expansion Run: Through Wrigley/ Washington
Here's what we found: Heavy gang tagging between 14th and 15th on Cedar/ other side of Washington Middle. All reported for removal. Not much dumping in central Wrigley, but there was an alarming number of what looked like Blue Crosses or Cross Hairs at Chestnut and Hill. They were on a mailbox/ street sweeping sign and a tree. All reported for removal, as was a dumped fridge in Cedar Heights/ Wrigley.
In early April I mistakenly sent a compliment to Go Long Beach. I meant it to be an observation about tree trimming.
At the time, I was just trying to see how long it would take the city to respond to a simple tree trimming request.
The concern was the trees were so overgrown on Grundy, virtually no street light was doing a thing to light the path a night.
I expected no response.
What happened was the city hired an arborist and the arborist agreed. As much as I like trees, when they keep the entire street darkness every night, it is a safety issue.
A month ago, I noticed signs that the trees were interferring with the side walks and had been marked for removal. Two weeks ago the dumpsters show up and the trees started coming down
The point here is, when you ask for something for your neighborhood, the worst you will hear is no, so you might as well ask.
Okay, this clean up took a little longer than I had hoped, but Walnut Ave is clean again from PCH to Anaheim Street. The picture above shows how much trash was taken off the street this morning. The center shows how much trash can be left behind by a single vendor. Every flyer you see above is from the LA Gaviota Market on Anaheim and Gaviota. And that doesn't even include their flyers that came from south of 14th street.
When you multiply that by how many streets are in our neighborhood, you can clearly see how one market can make a huge difference, positive or negative. So far I have asked every business with an email address to take the city's anti litter pledge.
I am again asking every business in the MacArthur Park Neighborhood to follow this link, and agree to keep Long Beach and their neighborhood clean.
There were some pleasant surprises in today's clean up. Several street signs reported as damaged or tagged were fixed. The most important was the school sign next to Whittier Elementary that had the residue of gang tagging and looked like it was from a Mad Max film. Both that sign and a crooked and tagged one way sign were fixed almost as soon as they were reported.
One of the reasons Walnut takes so long is the street is well taken care of north of 14th street. Then after 14th street, specifically next to some of the larger apartments, it starts to look like the above before and after section. That little stretch of land, takes more than an hour to clean that thoroughly.
Next week, we will be cleaning 17th street from Orange to Gardenia on 05/23/2015. The meeting spot will be 17th and Orange at 10am. The clean up schedule is listed here.
