Cheektowaga workers go door to door to help residents
Ask about problems, then provide solutions
Published: November 13, 2009, 12:30 am
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Patricia Chronister answered her door Thursday morning in a bathrobe and stocking feet and with a bemused look as a police officer, housing inspector and recreation worker asked if she had any problems.
She was given a plastic bag of fliers with Town of Cheektowaga phone numbers and a recycling guide, then she went to the garage, where there was some old fencing she didn’t want. Someone made a call. A garbage truck was on the way.
“It’s wonderful,” Chronister said.
Cheektowaga, she said, is quieter and better patrolled than the Buffalo neighborhood near Kenmore Avenue she moved away from five years ago.
“It’s nice having people walking around and letting you know stuff about the town,” she added.
The visit was part of a new program, Operation Neighborhood Outreach.
Police officers and other town staffers went house to house in teams of three, offering to help fix problems and checking to see if barking dogs were registered. Others, with garbage bags, followed picking up trash.
“A lot of people are moving in. We have more renters,” Supervisor Mary Holtz said. “We just want to create a partnership with the new residents who move into town. It makes for stronger community.”
Some residents don’t know what services are available for senior citizens, such as van transportation, hot lunches and exercise classes, she said. There also are after-school programs for kids, basketball leagues and an ice-skating rink that is now open.
Cheektowaga, a town known for its Polish and working-class heritage, is in transition. Some residents who moved or died left behind abandoned houses that have decayed. New people, with children, moved in from Buffalo, with the most dramatic evidence along the city border, where crime and empty houses erode neighborhoods.
Officials are trying to adapt. For the last few years, the town has been buying and tearing down abandoned houses. Last year, a Buffalo-Cheektowaga task force began holding meetings to include new residents and talk about problems.
In September, town staff went door to door, beginning the outreach operation that continued for two days this week, targeting neighborhoods around the Alexander Street Community Center. Next spring, there are plans to take the operation to East Delavan Avenue and its side streets.
Thursday morning, someone answered the door at about one out of every five houses. One woman stood in the doorway and said she could think of nothing remarkable in the neighborhood— except the sounds of laughing children.
“But I like that,” she said.
Officer Paul Nazzarett smiled and repeated the news: “This young lady says there are actually children laughing in the neighborhood . . .”
The Operation Neighborhood visit led Leo Sucharski to step outside and talk.
“I think it’s a great thing,” said Sucharski, who had been bothered by the flickering streetlight in front of his house on Haller Avenue. “It’s always a question of who do you call.”
Nazzarett pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Who’s in charge of lights on Haller?” he asked.
Turning to Sucharski, he said, “National Grid’s going to be right up.”
Meanwhile, the animal control truck pulled up to help the next-door homeowner who said his barking dog was not registered.
Sucharski said he considered his street of neat brick houses part of old Cheektowaga. But sometimes the area feels ignored, said Sucharski, a 21-year resident of the neighborhood who has noticed more young people.
“Sometimes you see kids hanging around the streets, and it doesn’t seem like they have places to go,” he said.
From his house on the corner of Walden and Woodell avenues, George Hamilton has noticed more kids, too. He lets them use the compressor he keeps in the garage to inflate bicycle tires. He likes his house, which once had a butcher shop in the front. The mortgage is only $123 a month, and his wife loves the nearby shopping options, including Walden Galleria and Walmart.
Hamilton also said a man who lived in house across the street went to jail on drug charges. “We do have the best police department around,” he said.
He said he has no intention of leaving, even if the neighborhood is changing. “The whites have done that so often, so many times,” he said.
Years in the Navy taught Hamilton to get along with people of all races. “What you discover, of course,” he said, “is they’re all people.”
mkearns@buffnews.com
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