New Haven Independent

Three leaders from Dwight — Florita Gillespie, and Michael and Sheila Shanklin (pictured)— visited the Fair Haven meetingTHursday night to explain the Youth Academy program and get Fair Haven community leaders started on the project.

Because of the 501(c)(3) non-profit status of the Dwight Development Corporation, the Dwight team is coordinating the grant-funded Youth Academy program. But each participating management team is responsible for recruiting and selecting ten young people, deciding what kinds of surveying they will do — from traffic conditions to community resources — and scheduling dates for the surveys.

Fair Haven’s teen surveyors, ranging from ninth to twelfth grade, will each receive a $200 stipend for their work. They will be trained by the Dwight organizers before they set out on their tasks, supervised by a local college student. They will also be required to read Our Iceberg is Melting, a penguin allegory that charts eight steps to collective change.

Michael Shanklin, a founding member of the Dwight team back in 1990, said that the goal is to eventually compile the results of the surveys into a data warehousing system that will be available online through management team websites.

Fair Haven Management Team members voted to appoint Mary Rosario, who works with young people in Fair Haven, to chair an outreach committee to recruit and interview kids for the fellowship.

Police Round-Up

Drag racers on River Street have been successfully deterred by Jersey Barriers installed to reduce the width of the road, reported Lt. Luiz Casanova, Fair Haven district manager (at left in photo).

Graffiti removal is also a current priority, in partnership with the Livable City Initiative (LCI). “The key to diminishing graffiti is continuing to address it,” Casanova said. “If you let it sit there and condone it, it’s just going to continue to happen.” He said he recently talked a Fair Haven business owner out of the idea of letting graffiti artists paint a sign outside his property.

Cassanova and LCI Neighborhood Specialist Laurie Lopez (at right in photo) both emphasized problems with abandoned property in the Fair Haven area. Lopez reported 23 new vacant properties in Fair Haven since April.

“We’re seeing what happens when a neighborhood is getting depressed, when you sometimes have two, three, or four vacant houses on one block.” She said LCI is working to keep properties safe, secure and clean, and can use help from residents in reporting problem conditions and behaviors on these sites.

All burglaries in the last quarter were residential rather than commercial, Casanova said, most of them taking place at construction sites or abandoned properties. He said the police department has made four arrests in such cases, for theft of assorted metals and household items.