Neighborhood safety is a collective effort

Pull together to lift up Midtown | Guest column, Oct. 20

Neighborhood safety is a collective effort

I appreciate the words you wrote on our responsibility to provide a safe environment for our children. I hope you will write about what works here and in other cities so that more people can put good ideas into action.

The Bartlett Park Neighborhood Association has found success in reducing crime and eliminating homicides by door-to-door contact, block parties and a citizens patrol. The results are more calls to police with useful information, more effective policing and the complete elimination of public street drug sales and the gunfire that goes with drug traffic.

It is very easy to prevent outsiders from coming into a neighborhood to buy drugs. When the flow of customers and money stops or even slows, drug dealers move on. Their corrosive impact on children stops. Without gang intimidation, kids can have a normal childhood and do well in school.

You are invited to join us and see how this works. Every Thursday (except the second Thursday of the month), a citizens patrol goes down each street helping residents. We meet at the resource center at 5:30 p.m. and go out for an hour.

Tom Tito, vice president, Bartlett Park Neighborhood Association, St. Petersburg

After defeat, will city listen? | Oct. 24

City attorney's advice shows poor judgment

I am not surprised by this action. Ever since City Hall tore down the homeless tents because they were in violation of the fire code, I have suspected that, in a meeting at City Hall, City Attorney John Wolfe advanced that there was a violation and the tents should be immediately removed. If he wasn't right there in the conversation then I have to ask — why not?

Years later I am still seeing homeless people bedded down on my City Hall property, and City Attorney Wolfe is still doling out advice at City Council meetings. My opinion of the City Council members who listen to Mr. Wolfe and shake their heads in agreement with his statements is lessened each time I see it happen.

Why is this man still working for the city of St. Petersburg in this capacity? On really cold nights does the mayor think to send him down to City Hall to hand out extra blankets? Maybe when he does, if there any left over he could come by my house and cover a few plants — since I pay his salary with my taxes.

There are 78,000 practicing attorneys in the state of Florida. We deserve better than this kind of poor advice from our legal employees in city government.

Greg Cahanin, St. Petersburg

Small act of kindness was unexpected gift

A recent Friday started out like every other day except for planning my wardrobe selection around my scheduled bone scan at Mease Countryside (no zippers or metal fasteners). After the venal injection, I was instructed to return at 3 p.m. for the scan. Having a few hours to kill, I went to the Woodlands shopping center. Becoming weary too early to return to Mease, I dragged myself to Eva's Restaurant.

After ordering, the couple sitting at an adjacent table rose to leave, and the young man stopped beside me and placed a $10 bill on my table saying, "I'd like you to be my guest for lunch today."

My reaction was speechless surprise and disbelief, and my embarrassed response was to thank him and share the fact that as I was celebrating my birthday, I would accept his gift in the same spirit in which it was offered — promising that I would "pay it forward."

This most unexpected treat really brought tears to my eyes and, on reflection, I realized that as a widow for six years, this particular day was the very first time I had gone into a restaurant by myself. This young man could not have known what a beautiful gift that lunch was for me, as I felt he was the vessel that brought me loving wishes on my special day from my beloved Lee.

Every day our media are full of horror stories. I wanted to share this true story of a small, meaningful blessing that was delivered to me by a stranger with a huge, caring heart.

Barbara T. Boguslaw, Tarpon Springs

New sports bar opens | Oct. 27

Path of destruction in another neighborhood

With growing dismay I read the article about the Doghouse Bar & Grill, a popular Harley hangout already in cities like Daytona Beach, opening its first Tampa Bay location in a former Hooters at 2901 Tyrone Blvd. The owners, who also own the Central Oyster Bar and Bishop Tavern in downtown, have doubled the capacity of the original restaurant to 250 — half of it an outdoor deck. With a full liquor bar, they have plans for concerts, pay-per-view events, live sports events and motorcycle run gatherings. Bartenders are called the Hog Wild Girls.

How can I even e-mail decently to you what this means to west St. Petersburg? There are neighborhoods, neighbors, people living behind this venue. How could permission have been given by city staff to allow this capacity to be doubled, to allow this public venue whose back parking lot is separated from a neighborhood by a wall?

The building is located on a side street off Tyrone Boulevard with nowhere near enough parking. It means death for the quiet sushi restaurant next door that has been a good citizen, paying taxes, and no burden on the community.

It means noise, litter, crime, drunken driving, drunken incidents, and motorcycles up and down Tyrone Boulevard at all hours.

Have you ever traveled by Quaker Steak & Lube during one of their events? Both the city and county have been besieged by neighborhoods living anywhere in the vicinity of that establishment, begging for help from law enforcement. This "new sports bar" will cause so many more problems for an area already struggling with excessive noise, crime, litter and panhandling.

West St. Petersburg neighborhoods are dying! Good people are moving out. Nice homes are becoming derelict. Crime and drugs are moving in. And one of the main reasons why is because we allow businesses such as this to intrude in areas where they should not be allowed. Two hundred-fifty people, outdoor concerts, motorcycle runs? Would you want this in your neighborhood?

Heidi Sumner, St. Petersburg