Whalley neighbors like Peaches Quinn (pictured) reported at least temporary success in their struggle to save their police substation. Not everyone was celebrating.
As usual, the monthly gathering of the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) management team took place Tuesday night at the storefront substation at 386 Whalley Ave. But that was not always a foregone conclusion.
In the face of an emergency budget crunch last month, the mayor’s office cut funding for the WEB substation from the city budget. Though the residents did not take up arms this time, they came close, holding an “emergency meeting,” staging a City Hall stake-out and demanding the city find about $20,000 in a multi-million budget for their neighborhood’s community-policing epicenter.
The city did not. Instead, the residents faced the inevitable: they would have to raisesome the money themselves as part of a compromise that involved partial city funding.
Nearly a month later, the plan, organizers announced Monday night, is proving successful. The substation will remain open until at least January (At least they have not heard otherwise yet.) And the landlord has agreed to a month-by-month payment schedule so that fund-raising can continue through the rest of the year, said Beaver Hill Alderman Moti Sandman (pictured).
Among the contributors so far are Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts ($100) and the political action committees of state legislators Patricia Dillon and Toni Harp ($500 each). Letters requesting further funds and signed by the area’s aldermen went out this week to local businesses.
Once the good news was relayed, Peaches Quinn, WEB’s treasurer, raised her objections, calling the arrangement a “terrible” and “awful” model.
“It’s a very dangerous precedent to ask citizens to raise money,” she said. “I think once they do that… it can easily become the habit.”
The problem, she elaborated afterwards in an interview, is that by shifting the burden to citizens, the city is getting away with abdicating one of its basic responsibilities: public safety.
“The substation model,” she said, “is the heart and soul of community-based policing.”
Added others at the meeting, it is also one of the standout substations in the city — a paradigm of leadership for other neighborhoods.
“I kind of agree with you, too,” said Beaver Hill resident Jane Mills when Quinn offered her critical assessment of the precedent potentially set. “I had these visions before I came here today: ‘What if?’ What if we lose our substation, and then what if… [they say] ‘Why don’t we merge back with Dwight,’ Godforbid?”
Sandman and Board of Alderman President Carl Goldfield, who also was in attendance, promised that such a merger would be unlikely to happen, at least not without extensive debate, even if the district lost its substation. The board recently passed legislation demanding that any redistricting first pass through its auspices.
In an interview after the meeting, Sandman said that Quinn did make a valid a point.
“They’re well founded,” he said of her fears. “But you know what? We have to deal with it.”
He went on, though, to question WEB’s response, which involved convincing the landlord to halve the rent. “Maybe we didn’t do everything right,” he said. After at first stopping himself — “I’m not going to second-guess myself; we did what we did what we did” — he admitted, “I think we should have pushed the landlord harder.”
The substation cuts occurred during a round of citywide emergency budget cuts. City officials originally sought to close the substation. They said it’s the only one in town for which the city pays rents (instead of owning the space outright); and that some important functions of the substation, like enabling cops to be visible in the community, can take place in police cruisers, where they can file reports while parked. Neighbors called the substation essential as a meeting space and visible anchor for crime-fighting.
WEB Management Team Chairman Robert Caplan (pictured above) put the issue in frank terms.
“While the residents and the businesses are willing to kick in this year,” he said, “we expect the city to have this budgeted next year.”
‘Raucous’ Plan For Wednesday Night
John Vuoso (pictured below), a local business owner, reiterated Tuesday night his plans to cause a “raucous” at tonight’s meeting of the City Plan Commission in order to stop — or at least stall — Mobil Station owner Gurjant Narain’s proposed construction of a convenience story at the corner of Whalley and Sherman.
“I want everyone out tomorrow night with their pom-poms,” he told the group, confiding later to another resident that he would be quite “pissed” if they did not show up.
(To read Allan Appel’s report on the controversial plan, click here.)
Goldfield warned the group attendees to come prepared with not only quality-of-life arguments but also pointed legal arguments and means of stalling, such as requesting that a traffic assessment be commissioned. He faced one dissenter: Eli Greer said he could not easily “understand the difficulty” with the proposal and might prefer a neighborhood discussion over a City Plan Commission protest. Vuoso promised they would come prepared (and must).
“It’s not about putting someone out of business. It’s about the realities of Whalley Avenue,” he said after the meeting. “We need to stop it at any cost.”