Allan Appel Photo
Westville Manor resident Asia Melton explains how she got pothole fixing results.
West Rockers agreed that their neighborhood needs speed bumps. Bus service that actually gets people where they need to go. A shuttle bus to Hamden.
As for more cops and a substation? Opinions were divided.
That animated back-and-forth about a range of public transportation and safety issues — and neighborhood priorities —unfolded Saturday morning at a community meeting convened at the Brennan-Rogers School on Wilmot Avenue.
The organizers were Southern Connecticut State University graduate student in public health Maedesha Mitchell and Rockview resident Makia Richardson. The two have stepped up as area leaders through the overall supervision of Alycia Santilli, the director of CARE (Community Alliance Research and Engagement), a grant-funded public health organization active out of Yale University and for the last year at Southern.
Saturday morning’s meeting, which drew two dozen neighbors, was one in a series of focus groups and community-building events that have been held over the last six months. Their aim: to highlight poor public transportation, inadequate sidewalks and street lighting, and dangerous traffic that have long plagued this bucolic yet isolated neighborhood on the western edge of New Haven by the Hamden border.
A bike crash last fall in which Common Ground High School’s Farm Director Deborah Greig was struck by a car on Springside Avenue catalyzed students to research and submit a Complete Streets application to the city, which is now pending.
Joel Tolman, Common Ground’s director of impact and engagement, was in attendance Saturday along with representatives from nearby Job Cops and Solar Youth’s Joanne Sciulli. He said that Common Ground’s application “lines up” pretty nicely with the concerns and suggested ameliorative measure outlined at Saturday’s meeting.
Much of the discussion centered on the need for bus service that is safer and that connects the area’s schools and other institutions. There are a lot of assets, dots, as it were in the area and the challenge is to connect those dots, Tolman said.
Neighbors said this stretch of Wintergreen, near the Job Corps campus, needs speed bumps.
Tolman said that for the last decade students and teachers could rely on what was known then as the B1 bus, which daily wound its way from Whalley Avenue to Southern Connecticut State University’s campus and out to a stop right in front of the Common Ground campus on Springside, to get to school on time.
That all changed last year when CT Transit changed the route.
“I think it is part of the change of bus service, which is awesome, that brought service to Rockview” housing development, Tolman said at the time.
But now students are given a choice by bus drivers: get dropped off just across from the Wintergreen Avenue bridge, which is not a bus stop, and walk over to school without the benefit of a sidewalk. Or ride the bus for an extra 20 minutes through Brookside and Rockview, past the New Haven Job Corps Center, and finally down to the bus stop in front of Common Ground’s campus.
Springside resident Kathy Fay at the unsidewalked, dangerous intersection on Wintergreen, by Common Ground, that students must traverse to school.
Changing that emerged as a top priority at the meeting that honed down to three from about 11 concerns that CARE staffers had previously elicited — from new bus shelters to the need for more job training and better community communication.
In addition to public transportation changes, the two other priority issues that emerged Saturday were physically safer streets and public safety in general.
The rebuilt Rockview and Brookside public-housing developments have emerged as thriving new complexes after previous decades of blight and neglect. Participants cited continuing problems and made lists on construction paper of specifics to call to the attention of city officials.They called for reconstituting the old bus route and for more frequent CT Transit bus service in general.
Facilitators Mitchell, left, and Richardson.
Under safer streets, residents called for speed bumps on Level Street, better lighting at the store at Wilmot and Brookside, which has endured at least one robbery, and speed bumps on both Brookside and Wintergreen, which both run along the campus of Job Corps.
One audience member suggested more cops on walking beats and officers who engage with the community, rather than look past residents. Tolman asked if trying to recruit an officer who lives in the West Rock community — as the Housing Authority of New Haven has done at other developments— should be among the priorities. That specific suggestion did not make the list. Asa Melton, 23, said she didn’t see a need for more cops in the neighborhood. Eddie Moore, who grew up on Ashmun Street in the old Elm Haven “high/low” projects (where Monterey Place is today), recalled finding the “project cops” helpful.
“We are a school. Most schools have speed bumps,” said Renee Venturino, who manages outreach and admissions for Job Corps. She said a car crashed into the school’s welcome center on Wintergreen last year. There were no injuries but it was a harbinger of accidents to come, she said unless safety concerns are addressed.
The only store in the area, at Wilmot and Brookside, which lacks safety lighting.
The revitalized Rockview and Brookside developments do have speed bumps on various streets. Still, Kerry Sterling-Walker, who lives on Jennings Way in Brookside, said speeding continues, right outside her window. “God forbid somebody hit the gas and not the breaks, they’d be in my kitchen,” she said of one recent close call.
Resident Yvette Emory reminded everyone that nothing would be accomplished unless the ear of the mayor is filled with residents’ sense of urgency. Santilla and Sciulli both spoke about the importance of individual residents emailing and calling downtown as well as urging their neighbors to attend future meetings.
Sciulli reminded the group that issues posted on SeeClickFix are regularly attended to by the city. Proof was in the room.
“Asia posted on SeeClickFix, right?” Sciulli said.
“I posted a pothole and they came to fix it the next day. On Level Street. In 2015,” Asia Melton responded.
Longtime residents Victoria Benson and Eddie Moore.
Facilitators Mitchell and Richardson drew the meeting to a close by recruiting three teams to represent the three issues — public transportation, safer streets, and public safety — to the city and CT Transit officials whom organizers will invite to the next meeting.
“What about activities for kids?” said Melton, who volunteered to be the group’s speaker next month on public safety concerns.
“We’ll add that to public safety,” said Mitchell.
Twenty-year-old Asia Melton thinks there should be more programs for little kids under five, but no more cops, and certainly no police substation.
Eddie Moore, about three times her age, who grew up on Ashmun Street in the old Elm Haven “high/low” projects, where Monterey Place is today, and where he found what he called the “project cops” helpful, really likes the idea of more cops including a substation.
However, they, along with absolutely everyone else in the room, agreed that CT Transit service in the area is an inconvenient mess, and minimally should revert to the old routes so high school kids at Common Ground don’t have to walk across an un-sidewalked bridge and a dangerous intersection to get to school.
And a shuttle bus directly to Hamden, saving time and irritation, would also be nice.
That meeting is scheduled for Feb. 7 at 5:30, also at the Brennan-Rogers School.