[CializCialiscsqw]

#1) Do you think you are fairly taxed, given the services available to you and your neighbors?

No, taxes eat away a significant portion of the rental income from our garden level unit. Police response time is a joke, the local branch library quality isn't the greatest, the local schools are terrible and quite the eyesores.

#2) Do you feel Mayor Menino and other elected officials address all of the issues you care about in your community? If not, what can they do better?

No, they appear for photos and promote their social personal agendas. They could care less as long as their tax revenues continue to increase. They sell the chic and slowly approve beautification projects for the happy tourists but ignore the festering infrastructural/social problems which have existed for decades.

#3) Do you feel safe at night in your community?

I personally do, but there are many instances of armed robbery, sexual assaults, and burglary for a neighborhood considered to be Chic. Most of these incidents are related to the location of public housing and those in the neighborhood for drug treatment or homelessness.

#4) Are you a parent? How many people live in your household?

Yes, twin daughters, one son, all university age. I live with my wife and the kids visit occasionally. A couple lives in our rental unit.

#5) How would you rate the quality of the public schools in your district?

One could confuse the zoo for humanity for a public school based on the quality. Aesthetically and urbanistically the facilities function akin to industrial parks.

#6) Are you concerned about the quality of police and fire safety, education, and medical care in the South End today? How do you think you'll feel about it five to ten years from now?

Police response is a joke, unless blood or bullets are involved they can take several hours to never showing up on one phone call. Fire safety is reasonable unless one lives adjacent to an abandoned building, their response time is consistently good. Education is terrible as mentioned before. Medical care is good in the city, however the medical center is a dumping ground for the city's homeless and habitually high. These transients tend to then migrate through the neighborhood. Five to ten years from now it'll likely be the same if the same policies and funding continue.

#7) What ethnicity do you most closely identify with? About how old are you (30's, 40's, etc.)?

Ukrainian, Mid 50s

[Unjucky]

I didn't mean to take this off-topic; anyone who has an opinion who lives in the South End should respond.

I did, ablarc, I sent it a couple days ago, by email.

[CializCialiscsqw]

I live near Villa Victoria and closer to Washington Street than Tremont to put things into perspective.

THINGS ARE MUCH BETTER than in the 80s, for instance the trash is picked up and not dumped waste deep in the back alley nor is every streetlight on the block burnt out, however it isn't the happy Bowfront Brick Disneyland that the city tries to sell to tourists yet.

When you have cars broken into or vandalized and the police take four hours to show up, it's terrible. It's also awful to have some crackhead trying to break down your front door from 1am to 4:30am with no response from the police. I shouldn't have to clobber someone, disturbed whom attempted break into my home for several hours, with a truncheon, and hope they never come back, because the D4 can't bother to do its job.

Read the weekly police blotter highlights posted in the Courant if you don't believe a significant amount of crime doesn't occur in the South End.

[zithromaxlinks]

3 a.m. pacifier for wayward baby.

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ItemL...aspx?catid=959

[gluckmeea]

I cannot contribute to the survey. Sorry. (Taking this further off point??)

Whoa. Seems as if the South End hasn't changed much in the twenty years since I've been there, eh, because I got the impression it became an urban utopia.

Boston Police have changed, though?
I never had any negative associations or issues with BPD. (Astounding revelation, eh? ) And I'm probably equally, if not more anti-establishment, I guess you can categorize it, than you Lurker, if I can be so judgmental.

Plus, Villa Victoria was considered the 'good' part of the hood, even in the late 70s early 80s.

I started on Columbus near Mass Ave during the early to mid-Eighties, then moved to Worcester near Shawmut for the latter part.

I never had any problems on the streets. As you may have guessed, I was out at all hours, too. I know others who were not so lucky. I'm just not somebody even the street trash would consider messing with. That's why I can survive the big, bad streets of Oakland so well, too. Heh

[sherrferris]

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[Idorsearogele]

^ A very enjoyable story.

Has anyone seen Grand Torino?

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