South of South Town Watch

With the “Tell the Mayor” stories approaching, it was very difficult at first to pick a topic to ask residents of South of South about. However, after researching the areas more, we found that within the areas, each of the 2 main outlines of our area (Queens Village and Bella Vista) have their own publications. They each produce, whether it’s online or in paper, their own version of a newspaper/newsletter, helping us get a better look at the issues that matter to the residents.

In Bella Vista, one of their major issues is crime. With that, patrolling, or walking up and down streets within their neighborhood has become something many residents have gotten involved in. Residents usually meet at a police station and then patrol the area for about 2 hours. Wednesday nights are considered “New Member Nights”, and Tuesday nights are also a night that residents walk. In Queens Village, they also have a town watch committee, but in comparison, are a little bit more relaxed. They don’t have much of an organized meeting to do it, but encourage members of the community ot have an open eyes and ears approach while walking around.
Another major issue facing the area, as well as Queens Village, is the idea of casinos being built in Philadelphia. For Bella Vista, the residents the issue of a casino being built is not completely out of question, but they feel as though there should be a 1500 buffer area between casinos and schools, neighborhoods, etc. For Queens Village, they are completely against the casinos being built, buffer or not buffer. In fact, Queens Village is currently in the process of filing a suit against the Pennsylvania Gaming Commission for wanting to build the casino in such a residential area. They feel it will make the area become unsafe, their quality of life to go down in the community, small businesses will suffer, etc. The neighborhood has created a whole entire group to help fight this problem, and some individual residents have donated up to 2,500 dollars in contributions.

Team 3, South of South--Laura Mailey and Scott Simpson