Special Board of Aldermen 12-14-2021 Page 4
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President and thank you very much. It is eye opening. | do have like four constituents that people
have complained about as well as they have contacted me. | Know in one particular case, much like you said, there's a
health issue in the family. The spouse cannot take care of it and there's a prideful thing. So sometimes when you kind
of approach people, | would be very interested in the knock and talk kind of things that you were taught because | think
that might help some of the community too to help their neighbors without embarrassing them.
One other constituent purposely grew the weeds, greenery, whatever you want to call it way out of control for butterflies,
and critters, and things like that. She felt that that was her way of taking care of that. So we have to be cognizant that
people have, well, you may have a very beautifully landscaped property, your neighbor may have a more organic kind of
feel. So | think we just need to be careful.
Carolyn Choate
Balance.
Alderman Klee
Yes we need to balance and we need to be careful when we're speaking to our neighbors in that respect.
| also want to commend you for the weeding that you did. Over the spring and early summer, | worked with a number of
different groups and we cleaned up trash, and we did a lot of weeding, and we even helped people with their yards as
such. We worked with businesses and we worked with other people. The Tolles Street Mission actually did planting and
things like that and all around. Are you finding that you have groups that are coming forward that would be willing to do
things like that?
Carolyn Choate
Yes, we are but we're also finding frustration in as much as many groups will come together to do a specific cleaning
effort but then feels that one of the things missing in the dynamic is we would prefer a policy of long term maintenance.
Not this reactive once in a while until another situation occurs where it's so bad everyone feels so compelled to clean up.
We are hoping for a long term maintenance plan from the city on many of the projects that groups work on. That is the
best case scenario.
Alderman Klee
Thank you so much. | appreciate the clarification on it and | do understand. When you work really hard to help clean
something up and then you see later on a month later it's back to where it was, you feel like you've kind of wasted your
time. So | appreciate it and | understand what you're saying. Are you looking for changing in zoning? Are you looking for
more gardens such as what we see on Manchester Street, or Henry Bourque, or something of that nature where
independent garden groups do those things? This was a beautiful presentation. I’m just not quite sure what it is specific.
Carolyn Choate
The one example of - it would be nice to see maybe laws in place for the commercial aspect, seeing that, you know,
there are no laws in place for commercial aesthetic properties. Maybe it's time we did have something in place for them.
There's no law. There's a law against no snow being snow blown in the inner road. There's a law against no leaves
being raked or blown into a road. There's no law against grass being mowed into a road. | had people call me and say
my neighbor is dumping like huge clods of grass every week. He moves his yard and the grass is in front of his house
every week. That's dangerous for motorcycles for one thing, but again, it's aesthetically displeasing. He will never pick it
up. The neighbor has complained to him to no avail. So | called Code Enforcement. There's no law for that. So maybe
some things need to be tweaked.
Alderman Klee
Thank you.
Alderman Tencza
Just for the record as you said that Ma'am, we actually do have an ordinance on yard debris. So maybe that's something
