President's Page

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Daylight is getting longer every day. Many of you have made plans for your summer flowers and vegetables. It is always a good feeling to emerge from the cold weather months, and this year was exceptional – once again the groundhog got it right. Contrary to widespread belief, extreme cold does not reduce the summer’s mosquito population. After all, mosquitos are the honorary state bird of Maine – a state with winters far worse than ours.

We had a good turnout at our February civic league meeting. The program topic was the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and the presentation by Erica Ryder was very educational. Lots of questions followed and we may even have some folks interested in the volunteer opportunities at the refuge. Our Director of Programs, Jack Molovinsky, does an excellent job finding and reserving civic league meeting programs

that appeal to our residents. 

Our March Civic League meeting will feature a presentation by the Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Department. They do much more than just maintaining the neighborhood park and recreation center. Come to the meeting to learn all about the programs Parks & Rec offers - all while enjoying an hour with your neighbors. Looking

ahead, the April meeting will feature a presentation by Colin Stolle, our Virginia Beach Commonwealth Attorney. In May we will learn about Summer Safety with a presentation by a team from the American Red Cross. Mark your calendars – we always meet on the third Tuesday of the month.

Trailers in the neighborhood are again becoming a problem. If you own a trailer, boat, utility or camper, it must be stored behind the front line of your house. If that does not work on your lot, then you need to find a storage location that is zoned commercial. This doesn’t mean you can’t have it in your driveway when you are using or cleaning it, but to be stored, it must be behind the front line of the residence. Commercial trailers cannot be stored in a residential neighborhood at any time – it’s a zoning violation. The prevalent violation we are seeing is trailers parked in the roadway that are not attached to a vehicle. This becomes a police enforcement matter, and the trailer is subject to being tagged and towed.

Our ongoing traffic signal light issue at the intersection of Independence and Paul Revere continues to progress. The city is quite willing to spend $1.1 million dollars to install the traffic signal and pedestrian crosswalks. We see this as a waste of money and, when complete, a detriment to our neighborhood by encouraging yet another route for cut-thru traffic on our residential streets. The entire issue of the Independence – Paul Revere / Wakefield turning vehicle traffic danger could be easily solved with a NO LEFT TURN sign on the Wakefield side – a solution that would cost a few hundred dollars at best. Our former city council representative, the late

Louis Jones, saw this signal as unnecessary and the project stopped. Unfortunately, we lost Louis Jones and now Joash Schulman, our current District 9 council representative, and a resident of Thoroughgood, favors the traffic signal light and sided with VB Public Works to proceed. The mayor refused to wade into the issue. The other members of city council simply sat on their hands when Public Works presented the project.

Watching the city spend $1.1 million dollars on an unneeded project that will potentially cause harm to our neighborhood leads us to understand why we, and other neighborhoods, need to make better choices next November.

See the article in this newsletter on page 11 of the newsletter regarding a Nominating

Committee for Civic League Board positions. It is important and we need to do this.

John Eason, President