Mitman Neighborhood Association

by Sylvia Berman, Mitman Neighborhood Association president

Hi Neighbors!

During one of the storms that knocked out the power recently, there was a massive pile up in front of Sewell School … right where the horrific accident took place earlier this year. Several of us went over to see if we could help. A couple of cars hit each other, some cars were stalled due to the flooding and a fire truck stopped to try to check the situation. (The usual!)

Everyone was ok … but I asked these people if they live in the neighborhood. As I suspected, none of them did. They just use our street to pass thru. Later, I got calls from neighbors who couldn’t get to their own homes because they couldn’t get thru the mess.

I spoke with Councilman Kozachik about it and he reiterated that the Road Diet, ie., converting the street from 4 lanes to 3 lanes, really is starting in the fall. We are hoping it will lower the amount of traffic.

It has been easy to drive 60 miles an hour from Craycroft to Wilmot … but not anymore! That hawk light is being replaced with a traffic light. I am not sure how that affects Chantilly.

Steve K. also said the TEP is currently working on the power sources in midtown to try to avoid more outages. It seemed to me that TEP did a great job during the power failure. They worked continuously thru the night. People were relieved to see their trucks out so quickly after the storms. They fixed our pole at 3am.

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The property that used to be the old Riteway bldg., was taken to court by the City of Tucson … thanx to the efforts of board member Jennifer Beard. That’s how we were able to put a stop to the homeless camps in the parking lot. Currently they are owned by Aguirre Property Management in Nogales. They are back in court on September 6 over a variety of additional issues. We have reported the weeds along the 1^st Street side of the property and the metal structure being built, as far as we can tell, without a permit.

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Did anyone hear shots fired on Speedway on Friday, August 5^th? I received several calls from residents and the police recorded 4 reports including a crime scene team. This was in the 5800 block. The same block as Love Cabaret and Club XS. Of course, it could be unrelated to both. But for our safety, we would like to know if it has any relevance to our neighborhood.

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Once again, Mitman Neighborhood Association is appealing to the community for help with our website. It needs to be updated and made useful. Does anyone have experience with WordPress? Just a few hours would be very helpful. Harold Hallikainen has done a wonderful job of resurrecting it after if fell into neglect because our former President, Lou Bright developed dementia. But it needs the old materials archived and new links inserted. We would like to know what you think of the website … how can it be useful to you? 

https://mitman.org/

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Last but not least is Councilman Kozachik’s weekly newsletter (the link doesn’t always work, may need to paste into browser or ctrl + click)

https://www.tucsonaz.gov/Government/Mayor-Council-and-City-Manager/City-Council-Wards/Ward-6/Ward-6-News/Ward-6-Newsletter?article=3697a2f

by Sylvia Berman, Mitman NA President

Hi Neighbors!

It’s the dog days of summer and way too hot!!! There are lots of suggestions for fun stuff to do on our Facebook page. 

https://www.facebook.com/MitmanNeighborhood

The board is organizing the annual newsletter and meeting. Tentatively it is set for Saturday morning, October 14, 2023, and it will be held in the neighborhood again … by popular demand! 

Councilman Kozachik … an officer from TPD … as well our neighboring associations, will be invited. 

Currently, we are in the process of applying for a permit to close a portion of Hawthorne Street to traffic. We are in need of a neighborhood map. Anyone have one? Or know where we can obtain one?

We would like to circulate a petition for speed bumps at McKinley & Rosewood. (We cannot apply for speed bumps on Jefferson because those traffic circles are waiting to be updated.) 

Also, we will request donations to the traffic circle art project. The picture and details will be published in the annual newsletter. 

We are thinking of developing a bit of a street fair theme. Would anyone like to set up a table to sell things? Perhaps used items … crafts … home baked goods … lemonade stand? 

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The Mitman board is constantly reporting strange vehicles parked in the avenues in the neighborhood to Code Enforcement and TPD (McKinley, Van Buren, Jefferson). There have been reports of parked vehicles being used for selling drugs and / or prostitution. Resident vehicles are normally parked in front of their home … not on the avenues. Also, large trucks tear up the neighborhood streets. Feel free to report as a code violation or directly to me.

We have been working with Code Enforcement to get the mess in the front yard at 5750 E. 1^st Street cleaned up. (Occupants were evicted but kept coming back.) 

The weed problem at the well site on Baker & Van Buren has been reported to Tucson Water for clean-up. 

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Steve K’s weekly newsletter (the link doesn’t always work, might have to paste in your browser):

https://www.tucsonaz.gov/ward-6/newsletter/release?article=366f0f2

from Sylvia Berman

Hi Neighbors!

This past week, some of the board officers had an unofficial meeting with Eryck Garcia, Aide to Mayor Romero. It was a wonderful opportunity to share the innovations we have created with our board (additional officers in the form of advisors), modern bylaws, and our concerns. Eryck was very excited to witness an invigorated neighborhood association. Some of the others have fallen into stagnation. Perhaps our success will inspire others!

One of the topics that we discussed was the issue of speed bumps. This is a very difficult project to undertake. We tried to contact the residents surrounding the traffic circle on Rosewood & McKinley after numerous near miss accidents and a major mishap with the bollards. One resident was against speed bumps and the others were unresponsive. Eryck informed us that we need 70% of the community to sign petitions. (Jefferson is not eligible for speed bumps at present because the traffic circles are on the waiting list to be renovated.)

One possible solution would be to collect petition signatures at the annual meeting in October. We will also discuss the art project at that time.

We also brought to Eryck’s attention the frustration we feel with the City departments’ inability to get things done on a timely basis. Code Enforcement takes months from the initial complaint to view the situation. We continue to try to get something done about the piles of trash in front of the property on 1^st Street. Squatters were occupying the premises and their belongings were dumped in the yard and has attracted people picking through the mess. TPD has been to the property and asked Code Enforcement to do something about it. But, its been over a month and nothing more has happened.

Other frustrations that we brought up include enlarging the traffic circle at 2^nd & McKinley. This was supposed to take place in the spring, yet we have no word when this will actually happen. And now, we hear the Department of Transportation wants to discuss the Road Diet again … but most people just want to get the project done. And this is a big deal because everyone is fed up with 5^th Street.

Hopefully, Eryck will be able to bring these issues to Mayor Romero’s attention. Whether or not it will make a difference is a good question. But, at least Mitman NA is trying everything it can to get change effected. 

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Last but not least is Councilman Kozachik’s weekly newsletter. There is a very interesting article about training cats to handle a rodent population that seems to be occurring in some communities. You will have to copy and paste into your browser. This newsletter is not that easy to share in this format.

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/AZTUCSON/bulletins/3621450