Drugs

I think I will do what Bill suggested first(now that they know, what are the plans)if that is not all it should be maybe starting the march again would be a good idea. Anything is better than nothing.....I DO NOT WANT DRUG DEALING IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD......Therefore, we must do something. I might add that I am surprised at how rough this area is(24th street and 3rd Avenue) It needs cleaning up......
Kathy


By Kathy Young

Talk to Pete

This is nothing new. Ask Pete(your new neighbor) about this. It has been going on there for years.

By Bill

Ditto problem before

This has been a problem area before. At one point it was a focus area for the marches. If the police say they have something in the works you can probably believe them BUT lets see what kind of pressure we can bring on them (Association Board-President) to resolve this problem and keep it resolved. Maybe the solution is to actively solict the realitors in the neighborhood to identify with the police the problem properties and then attempt to convince the present owners to sell (market values being up) to people who want the properties in question to live and raise families in rather than rent and deal drugs out of.

All I am trying to say is that one way or another we need to make it a long run solution rather than a quick fix lets bust-em and move-in more drug dealers solution. The rest of the neighborhood has come so far from 10 years ago or even 5 years ago that I would hope that we could work out a solution that would benefit 24th and 3rd as well as the rest of Kenwood.

Again this area has been the ''worst'' since I don't know when and ''they'' have said before that they were working on it. Maybe as an association with a vested interest in cleaning up this area we could get more involved in making it LESS attractive to drug dealers in the first place. Lets work with the police but not necessarily wait for them to solve our long term problem for us.

Too many Rentals

I spoke with our community police officer tonight about this drug problem. After our chat, I tend to think that the police are definitely in a proactive state. They(the police)know which house the drugs are coming from, they know the names of the renters and have been out there on several different occasions and will continue to do so until the problem is taken care of. My faith is being restored in the St. Pete police dept! I'm coming from an objective point of reference being a newcomer to Kenwood, but as mentioned by many other folks on this discussion board, the root of the problem isn't the renters, it's the fact that there are far too many rental properties. It's all about supply and demand. Renters are transient, no rule book or guidelines that we could give the majority of these people would ever make much of a difference in the way they go about their day to day lives, Please note that I'm stressing the word ''majority'', there are some nice renters in the world too! So why don't we all buy up the neighorhood?? Seriously, if anyone can hook me up with the name of a landlord or two, I would be more than happy to take a look at some properties and possibly make an offer. I know it's a small step but it might be a start.