Two frequent topics of consternation at recent Northwood Civic Association meetings are being taken to court.

A pair of unanimous 18-0 resident votes urged President Barry Howell and his board to go ahead with plans to request an injunction on the opening of an addiction recovery facility on Roosevelt Boulevard and to sue the Frankford Community Y to open its financial records.

“We oppose this as much as you do,” State Rep. Tony Payton, who circulated a copy of a letter he sent to the city’s chief of the Department of Behavioral Health Arthur Evans,  expressing as much to, said of the opening of a Volunteers of America of Delaware Valley home on the 4800-block of Roosevelt Boulevard. Howell, Payton and others maintain that this in direct conflict with Northwood’s deed restriction.

“I think these court proceedings will bring to light that deed restrictions trump city zoning,” Payton said. “We certainly hope that’s the case.”

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State Rep. Tony Payton at the February Frankford Civic meeting.

It has become something of a tradition at Frankford Civic Association meetings in the past year.

The first 15 or 20 minutes of the meetings, held in a conference room on the second floor of the old Frankford Hospital, are devoted to typical zoning issues, event announcements and new community concerns. Then something changes.

The meeting becomes more of a conversation and the topic is always the same: recovery homes.

True to form, it happened again Thursday night. Only three or four residents were in attendance, outnumbered by media and legislative aides and almost doubled by the association’s executive board, but the conversation was no less lively.

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Frankford residents ask questions at the Dec. 3 Civic meeting about the proposal for the new Frankford Y.

A starry-eyed plan for reinvigorating the century-old Frankford Y has now lost the support of the civic association to whom the proposal was first presented.

Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell, who presided over the November meeting of his neighborhood group that featured the announcement that a for-profit group would purchase the cherished, nonprofit community center, stood up at Thursday night’s Frankford Civic Association meeting and addressed the issue aggressively.

“I sense a rat,” Howell said, to chatters of approval from the 16 residents and 10 Frankford board members in attendance. “They fed us Disney World, but this ain’t Disney World.” continue reading »

Paul Deery, a spokesman for Urban Eco Electric at left, and three Frankford residents listen to state Rep. Tony Payton's Chief of Staff Jorge Santana introduce their discussion on solar energy opportunities, held Nov. 19, 2009 at the Sankofa School on Paul St. in Frankford.

Five years from now, the most meaningful state and federal solar energy incentive programs may likely be gone, a spokesman from a solar panel leasing company said at a community meeting in Frankford Thursday night.

“For the next three to five years, it makes sense to get out and talk to homeowners,” said Paul Deery from Urban Eco Electric, a solar panel leasing agent based in West Conshohocken, at an event hosted by state Rep. Tony Payton’s office. Deery was one-fifth of those present at the sparsely attended affair held in the meeting room of the Sankofa Freedom Academy at 4256 Paul St. in Frankford.

The attendance last night — four people at peak — was “unfortunately” a common representation of other similar solar meetings Payton’s office has hosted recently, said the representative’s chief of staff Jorge Santana.

Below, get the scoop on these programs and video of Deery pitching his organization.

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The backyard of Frankford resident Majorie Rivera's neighbors, where she says she's seen drug deals take place.

It was early afternoon on Feb. 28, 2009 when Frankford resident Marjorie Rivera got an unexpected scene. She was getting ready to celebrate her wedding anniversary with her husband when they noticed a moving van outside of their two-story home. That chilly February day would be the first time Rivera would learn that the house next door was being turned into a recovery home for men.

As a mother of two daughters and aunt of many nieces, Rivera panicked as the thought of living right next to a recovery home settled into her brain.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh wow, I got problems. These are all men. Recovery home? Well that’s for drugs. And don’t courts usually send people to them? What if these guys did something?’ I don’t want that next door to me,” she said. continue reading »

The Frankford Civic Association board at its Oct. 1, 2009 meeting at the Frankford Hospital.

The 15th police district is often unresponsive to resident concerns about quality of life crimes, particularly so-called recovery homes, according to an impassioned call to action from state Rep. Tony Payton’s chief of staff at last night’s Frankford Civic meeting.

“We have to harass the police to get them to harass the criminals,” said Jorge Santana, Payton’s top legislative staffer.

Santana’s call came after another of the neighborhood’s monthly civic meetings broke down into a open venting of frustration over the ongoing battle with private boarding houses that are known citywide for selling themselves as places of recovery for people suffering from an array of addictions and instead devolving into havens for drug activity.

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