Public Safety officials visit Madison Park
Community Corner is a feature consisting of submissions from neighborhood community councils and other local organizations. To submit on behalf of your group, contact editor Daniel Nash at MPTimes@nwlink.com.
The onset of summer usually brings an uptick in crime to the Madison Park community. While this area is essentially free of violent crime, three categories of criminal activity are relatively common in the Park: residential burglaries, car prowls and graffiti. With this is mind, the Madison Park Community Council decided to focus on law and justice as its theme for June 2016. Furthermore, since we were scheduled to have both a regular first-Monday-of-the-month Board meeting and our annual general meeting in June, we decided to invite the city attorney and the police chief to each, respectively.
On Monday, June 6, 2016, Pete Holmes, our city attorney, accompanied by Nyjat Rose-Akins, our East Precinct liaison attorney, came down to the Madison Park bathhouse, talked to about 50 of us for 30 minutes about what the 100 attorneys in the office are up to on a regular basis, and then fielded questions for another half-hour. Some of the time was taken up with the subject of progress toward resolving the matter of the dilapidated building in the centre of the business district.
Subsequently, on June 15, 2016, we were informed, late in the day, that Kathleen O’Toole, our police chief, had been summoned by the Mayor to participate in a short remembrance parade because of the shooting that had earlier taken place in Orlando. Instead some 100 of us were addressed by Assistant Chief Robert Merner, who was in turn accompanied by Lieutenant Kevin Grossman, the second watch commander for the East Precinct. Luckily we can easily keep abreast of the latest crime activity in the neighborhood because usually six to eight police meet in the Madison Park Starbucks each evening at around 8:30 p.m., just before the coffee shop closes, and usually well before they become busy with miscellaneous trouble later at night. Bob Merner came to us fairly recently from Boston, where he had served for nearly 30 years. The annual general meeting was held in the chapel/meeting room of the Park Shore Retirement Community on the lake shore. We also had on display some of the recently purchased supplies currently filling our Emergency HUB lock box, which is located immediately adjacent to the tennis courts on the north side.
Three new members of the council were elected by ballot to replace three retiring members, whose three-year term was up. A summary of the financial activities of the council was also presented. There is still space on the board should you or anyone you know wish to serve, because the council bylaws call for a board membership between 12 and 21 members, and we currently have a complement of 15. The Community Council does not, traditionally, meet in July, so at the next regular board meeting, on the first Monday of August, the board will appoint the officers for the upcoming year.
Please put down on your calendar the evening of September 8, when our very popular and always very well attended art walk will take place. This event is a joint project of the council and the Madison Park Business Association.
Meanwhile, we wish you all a very pleasant summer!
- Maurice Cooper, President