Colonial Place/Riverview Civic League
COMMUNITY NEWS

April 2004

             Guest Speakers: Superward 6 candidates Barclay C. Winn and Bill P. Presher, At This Month's Meeting

NEXT BOARD MEETING will be April 19, 2004, at 7:00 pm.

DEADLINE for the May issue is Tuesday, April 27, 2004.

THIS MONTH'S MEETING AGENDA:   Monthly police report - Code enforcement update - Superward 6 Council representative, Barclay C. Winn and the challenger for his seat, Bill P. Presher will speak - Presentation by Tony Collins about plans to redo the historical building on Colley Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets.

First, I need to remind everybody about our upcoming Neighborhood Clean-up on Saturday, April 24th, from 10 AM until 12:00 noon (see related article). Make sure to spend some time gathering all that “stuff” that has been accumulating in the attic and garage. You won’t have a better opportunity to rid yourself of these things until next year.

Last month’s meeting was very busy. We heard about the new SPSA recycling container program and how wonderful this program will be once it is implemented in our neighborhood. Riverview will get a jump on Colonial Place but not for long. We then got a helpful earful about the best way to control unwanted pests in the neighborhood. Finally, we had a quick overview of the work being proposed at the Boat Ramp on Haven Creek. I know everybody still wants to hear more about the Haven Creek project and I guarantee you will. The primary objective last meeting was a vote to ask the City of Norfolk to fund this project. Once the funding is in place, the City Engineer in charge, Chuck Joyner will visit our Civic League and give us a more in-depth analysis. I must stress that the best way to follow the progress for plans at Haven Creek will be to attend the separate Ad Hoc committee meetings. Work from these meetings as well as information gathered from the city will then be disseminated in the newsletter and general meetings.

This month we will have as our guest speakers the two candidates for the City Council General Election in Superward 6. Our guests will be our present Superward 6 Council representative, Barclay C. Winn and the challenger for his seat, Bill P. Presher. I hope we can have a good turnout since these gentlemen are taking time out of their busy schedules to come to our Civic League meeting. A large turnout shows we care about our city!

We will also hear a presentation from Tony Collins about plans to redo the historical building on Colley Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets. This old building has been a knitting mill (thus the name of one of our creeks), an armory and a paper manufacturing facility. Mr. Collins has asked if he could give us a short overview about the future use of this building at our neighborhood entrance.

Remember, you make our CPRV Civic League effective, so plan to attend our meetings the second Monday of each month. See You There!

Happy Passover and Easter!

In a message I received from the Office of the City Manager, Regina V.K. Williams is asking for your help. In an all out effort to get a handle on code enforcement in Norfolk, citizens are being called to action. The city is serious and they are prepared to act on your concerns. The first step is a Call to Action. From April 1 to April 15 every resident is being invited to call 823-1111 and tell city personnel about your concerns with blight, code violations, trash, home and business code compliance, vehicles illegally parked on lawns, vehicles abandoned or whatever else needs attention.

The city will then work toward solutions for these problems. The message states that they can’t solve all problems overnight, but they will solve them. Follow-up plans include, a report to City Council on April 26th and a Healthy Neighborhood Summit on May 22nd for a report back to us. From this we learn about what’s been discovered from your calls and more importantly what can be done -together- to answer your concerns for our neighborhood

Do you know how many larcenies were committed in our CPRV neighborhood last month?
Do you know how many assaults & robberies were committed in our CPRV neighborhood last month?
Do you know how many vehicles were stolen from our CPRV neighborhood last month?

Well, now you can, and the answers may shock you. Your Neighborhood Watch program is reaching out to each one of you to participate. We set aside one evening at the end of every month to discuss problems and develop solutions for our CPRV neighborhood. The monthly meeting, held at Stuart Center, will keep you informed on what is truly going on in our neighborhood. These meetings also provide tips on how to keep your family and your property safe.

What is the Neighborhood Watch program? First, you can put aside any preconceived notions from the vigilante movies and TV programs you may have seen. It is not a 24-hour, neighborhood surveillance of club-wielding citizens patrolling the streets for crime. Neighborhood Watch is just “neighbors being neighborly.” It’s 100% community participation that shows the Norfolk Police Department we care. It’s awareness and communication. It’s simple, and it works.

We are all looking forward to spring so we can get outside and enjoy the warm weather - but we are not the only ones. This is also the time criminals like to visit CPRV to check out our homes to find ways to help themselves to our valuables. It has already happened to some of us, and without standing together as a neighborhood, it will happen to many more.

Get out and meet your neighbors while taking a small step to protect your home & your family. Please save the dates of March 29th, April 26th and May 31st to attend a short meeting, beginning at 6:30, with our Neighborhood PACE officers at the Stuart Center cafeteria.

Please contact Malcolm Martin at tidewatersurvey@aol.com if you have any questions.

The two candidates for Norfolk City Council running in Superward 6, which includes Colonial Place/Riverview, will address the Civic League at the Monday, April 12th, meeting. Barclay C. Winn, elected in May 2000, is running for re-election. His opponent is William (Bill) Presher. The format for their presentation will follow our normal candidate format: five minute initial presentation by each, questions from the audience presented alternately to each with the other then answering, ending with a three-minute summation by each of them.

Barclay C. Winn

Born in Norfolk, Virginia
Resident of Ghent
Graduated from Norfolk Academy; Bachelor of Science degree from North Carolina State University
Occupation: President and half-owner of Winn Nursery of Virginia, Inc., headquarters in Norfolk.
Community Involvement: City Council member since 2000; Chairman of the Council’s Public Amenities and Marketing Committee and member of the Youth, Education and Neighborhood Services Committee; also serves on Council’s Ghent Task Force, Wards Corner Task Force and Ocean View Task Force, and was appointed a member of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission; Trustee of Sentara Health System and member of its Medical Affairs Committee; Member of the Board of Trustees of Norfolk Academy; a coach of the Naval Base Little League Seniors; past chairman of the Armed Services YMCA; past president of the Sertoma Club of Norfolk and past chapter chairman and board member of the Tidewater Chapter of the American Red Cross; Also served on the board of directors for Atlantic Permanent Savings and Loan and Sentara Enterprises, and past board member of Sovran Bank’s Advisory Board.
Married with five children.

Bill Presher

Born in Little Rock Arkansas; Age 43
Resident of East Ocean View; Lived in Norfolk since 1987
Studied geology at the University of Arkansas
Occupation: 1981-1987 US Navy Nuclear Reactor Operator
1987-2000 Ship construction and repair
2000-present Contractor (Started New Frontier Contracting)
Community Involvement: Dedicated member of Christian Fellowship Ministries, International for 20 years.

Please mark your calendars for this year's Spring event on Saturday, April 24, from 10 am until noon. Dumpsters will be placed in the parking lot of the Haven Creek Boat Ramp, in the Circle where Newport and Rhode Island meet, Mayflower across from O'Sullivan's and the vacant lot behind the Subway at Columbus and 42nd Street. The City requires that all items be placed in the dumpsters and not left outside, with the exception of tires which may be placed to the side. PLEASE, no hazardous materials such as paint or garden chemicals. Colonial Place and Riverview are proud to be part of Keep America Beautiful. Please call me at 623-1197 to volunteer.

Have you always wanted to attend a Civic League meeting and have your voice heard? Or have you had difficulty hearing the speakers and stopped attending the meetings? Well, come on back! The Civic League is now the proud owner of a new public address system.

How did this come about? David Nye and I took on the task of researching microphones and speakers at local music stores. At the February meeting the following ideas were considered: easy portability, a quality system that would work well inside and outside, a wireless microphone to pass around and a wired microphone for the podium. A sum of $750 was voted on unanimously.

Now that the task has been accomplished we look forward to hearing from all of you at the Civic League meetings.

Meet Todd and Kay Corr. The Corrs live in the 4100 block of Newport Avenue, and are thrilled to be a part of our historical community. The Corrs have lived in the "Dillard House" for three years, steadily embarking on renovations as time and money allow. Todd is a Service Manager with Coastal Imports on 21st St. Kay is a software system project manager for Wyle Laboratories in support of NASA Langley Wind Tunnels, and a student with the Saint Leo’s Distant Learning Center. Kay and Todd are new participants with the Beautify Our Borders (BOB) committee. Their 12-year-old daughter, Darsey, is an avid soccer player with the Virginia Rush Soccer Club. Darsey is a student at Blair Middle School, and enjoyed running with the Blair track team this year. Darsey also enjoys her classes with the Hurrah Players. Their family enjoys walking their dog, and is especially thrilled with the friendly neighbors they meet along the way. Please make sure to say hello to these neighbors!

Did You Know? The month of April is set aside specifically for pothole repair in the City of Norfolk. The Streets and Bridges crews make sure all potholes reported to the City are repaired by the end of April. While you are encouraged to report potholes during the month of April, potholes are repaired throughout the year. You may call, e-mail, or write at any time to report potholes.

To report potholes, contact the Department of Public Works’ Division of Streets & Bridges customer service at 823-4050 or email us at www.norfolk.gov/publicworks/report_pothole.asp. You may also write to the City of Norfolk, Department of Public Works, Division of Streets & Bridges, 2205 McKann Ave., Norfolk, VA 23509.

The waiting game continues along Granby Street in Riverview Village and the weather has been less than cooperative. The stamped brick crosswalk installation should begin shortly, as should the new landscaping for the Riverview triangle. The corner of Granby Street and Delaware Avenue is currently under construction. Once completed, a right-hand turn off Granby Street onto Delaware will be easier and should leave fewer tire marks on the curb.

The numerous darkened or damaged streetlights throughout the business district have been reported at least twice to Dominion Virginia Power. Both business owners and residents have noted that adequate lighting is a priority for the area and have urged the power company to replace the lights as soon as possible.

The waterfront lot at the foot of the Granby Street Bridge on the east side (the Christmas tree lot) has recently been sold. At this time, no plans for development have been offered, but the league will try to stay apprised. This gateway location is important to both the residents and businesses.

The Virginia Zoo anticipates opening the prairie dog exhibit on June 26. You’ll have an opportunity to go eye to eye with a prairie dog (sure beats going eye to eye with the critters last month’s speaker lectured about!). Be sure to continue to support our “neighborhood” zoo by becoming a member, joining the leadership society or by buying a Zoo Brick (visit www.virginiazoo.org for details). The Zoo gift store is stocked to the brim with new merchandise that’s both fun and educational. There are also several new displays of personalized items that the kids will love to peruse. Please keep the Zoo gift store in mind when you need to purchase children’s gifts. Let’s make the Zoo gift shop our local toy store (and remember Virginia Zoological Society members receive a 10% discount on their purchases).

As spring finally comes our way, be sure to get out and shop the neighborhood first.

The Haven Creek Committee was formed as a subcommittee of BOB (Beautify Our Borders), at first, as a group of volunteers whose modest goal was to clean up and maintain the western side of Haven Creek of trash that had over the years been accumulating in an area mostly ignored. Practically overnight, the subcommittee took on an entirely different character as developers on the eastern side of the creek inspired the city to take a new look at our western shoreline. They decided, with development moving forward on one side, that the time had come to take a second look at projects outlined but set aside due to the inevitability of having to prioritize projects in a pool of limited funds.

As Al Abiouness and Peter Decker move forward with their development plans, a city engineer has requested funding be added to the 2005 budget to renovate the public boat ramp facing Delaware Avenue. Additional funding will be requested to build a bulkhead and restore the community path alongside the creek. The community’s paper street and bulkhead on Mayflower Road are proposed to be renovated over a four- year period, in steps, proceeding north from the boat ramp up the west side of Haven Creek. While a project of this size takes time—the city says it cannot allocate more than $250,000 for this project in any one budget year—the planning for what will take place one, two, three, and four years from now is being researched, envisioned, discussed and debated now.

Our committee’s mission is to learn as much as we can about possibilities for this area, by inviting experts to appraise the situation and help us create an intelligent and realistic goal we can take to the league board and general membership for a unified community position the league can then take to partner with the city to influence the best possible outcome for all stakeholders who are involved and care about what happens now and into the future. Our efforts are as good as the number of neighbor volunteers stepping up to the plate and the quality of those experts we can reach and who participate in the process. Good planning takes time and tireless effort. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t enjoying ourselves along the way. With developers interested in moving forward with their plans, the city reacts by moving up projects and funding dates.

Our work is now and we invite you to be a part of it. You might want to create your own niche of study. You might want to join a subcommittee that has recently been created. You might want to come to our meetings and observe what is going on, without actively participating at all. You might come without any plans to go further than listening and in time find yourself becoming more active than you originally intended.

But we encourage observers too. This is community democracy, town-hall like. You can follow our progress in our league’s newsletter and sign up on our email list. You can follow what’s going on by looking us up on the Civic League’s website: www.cprv.org The city’s lead project engineer, Chuck Joyner, will be speaking to our league when funds for the project have been allocated and the process is under way. What we decide now will affect our neighborhood for generations. Share the moment. We have been meeting on the last Tuesday of the month—but to confirm, call Steven Tobias at 627-8606.

Signs of a Rat Infestation:

Gnawings on boxes or containers of easily accessible food and along runways and burrows
Runways (rub marks or paths frequented by rats)
Burrows along the foundation of a house or other dwelling
Droppings (small, pellet shaped) in areas frequented by rats

Garbage
High grass and weeds
Junk, wood, and junk cars
Your house, garage, shed>

Leftovers, garbage, and off dirty dishes
Stored foods (like boxes of cereal)
Pet foods and dog droppings
Grass seed and bird feed
Fallen or rotten fruit

Rats are creatures of habit. They use the same safe pathways.
Rats feed within a 50 foot radius of their nest.
If you can put your little finger through an opening, it is large enough for a rat to enter.

Properly store garbage which eliminates a primary food source
Cut high grass and weeds which eliminates potential harborage
Remove junk or wood which also eliminates harborage
Bait or trap for rats before you demolish or disturb their habitat
Raise wood piles (firewood) off the ground by 8-12 inches

Poison with an anticoagulant such as Warfarin. Follow label directions! Place baits alongside runways, walls, and burrows. Keep baits dry, check daily and replace as needed. Keep children and pets away from poison bait.
Trapping is useful when poisoning is too hazardous, or when the odor from unrecovered dead rats would be a problem (like in your kitchen wall). Place traps alongside runways, walls, and burrows. Bait traps with soft candy (milk chocolate or gum drops), bacon rind, or peanut butter mixed with a little cotton. Check and reset traps daily. Never handle dead rats with bare hands.

Norway Rat: Most common and the largest of domestic rats with reddish brown fur and a blunt nose. Average weight: one pound. Prefers the outdoors and burrows under foundations and in trash dumps. Indoors, it lives between the floors and walls, in trash piles, and other concealed places.
Roof Rat: Smaller than the Norway rat, weighing on average 8 to 12 ounces with black fur. Prefers above ground dwellings, attics, between walls, enclosed areas of cabinets and shelving, Outdoors it prefers trees and thick vines.

Each citizen is personally responsible for the control of rats on his/her own occupied, or rented property. So get busy eliminating rat food and harborage. A clean house and yard are the best control measures.

Norfolk Public Health Department
Division of Vector Control
2800 Tarrant Street
Norfolk, Virginia 23509
Phone: (757) 683-2840

An article in the March 28, 2004, issue of the Virginian-Pilot suggested two other ways to discourage unwanted rodents. One was to light up the space twenty-four hours a day. In our attic in Houston we used an extension cord and a trouble light to reach the darkest corners. Compared to the alternatives, light bulbs are pretty cheap. We never tried the ammonia in a bucket, but many people suggested it. The fumes make your space less desirable. Just make sure you keep pets and kids away and don’t have the fumes near anything that will draw them into your household HVAC system.

If you have cedar shakes on your sidewalls near good entry points, it helps to put hardware cloth behind any shakes you replace. Roof rats can chew through a single layer of cedar shakes in one night. The hardware cloth is usually enough to discourage them and send them elsewhere.

              The Colonial Place/Riverview Civic League
              P.O. Box 6130
              Norfolk, VA 23508

              E-MAIL: president@cprv.org (checked weekly)

              WEB PAGE: www.cprv.org

Community News Editor:   Kelly Sorensen, Phone 622-0437
Community News Distribution:   Margaret Bright, Phone 627-2815
Advertising:   Kelly Sorensen, Phone 622-0437

Please deliver typewritten newsletter items to:

              Kelly Sorensen
              Phone: 622-0437
              e-mail: cprvnews@cox.net