Friday, May 11, 2007

Metro Public Works to Pave Salemtown Alleys This Month

This morning I and a couple of other Salemtown Neighbors members met with Public Works head honchos in the alley between 5th and 6th Avenues not for a rumble, but to come to some mutual understanding on addressing Salemtown's problems. They told us that they are going to pave the alleys between 5th and 6th from Hume to Buchanan. Originally they were going to stop before they got to Buchanan, but one of the members present who lives on Buchanan told them about his alley deteriorating because of the garbage trucks that come through.

Another neighbor raised the issue that Schoene Ansicht (corner of 6th and Hume) developers were required by Metro Water officials to put down a crown in the alley next to their property because they have directed a surface-water holding tank run-off toward a low-lying property across the alley. Public Works officials told her that the alley would be paved as scheduled and that when Schoene Ansicht investors (UP, LLC) put the crown in that they would be responsible for any repairs to the asphalt put down beforehand. They told us that it had been a mistake to allow UP, LLC to build Schoene Ansicht as they had: packing as many townhouses as possible on a steep incline with inadequate provisions for proper underground stormwater run-off.

PW leaders also tried to emphasize that problems we encountered with Metro Customer Service in the past were not with their CS employees. They said that the problem with CS is that there are three different phone banks to which callers go when they want to file a complaint, and that creates response problems for PW. We were encouraged to contact PW in the future if we had any problems at all.

2 comments:

  1. Why don't they pave all the way to Coffee and be done with the alley all together? I guess there isn't enough new growth beyond Buchanan to justify the means...

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  2. I was under the impression that the alley between Coffee and Buchanan was already paved... perhaps they would add that stretch to the list if they knew it needed it.

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