Kim Tandy JUNE 2010 President 341-8044 SUMMER MEET AND GREET BEAUTIFUL PARKS TO BE HELD JULY 10 AT John Corvino SHERBOURNE HOME OF Did you know that Warrington resident Vice-President 861-0979 SHERRI AND GARY BROWN Ernest Thompson is maintaining our pocket parks this summer? Ernest’s considerable Marcia Baum Please join us on Saturday afternoon, July talents as a gardener are evident in the Secretary 10, for a Meet and Greet at the 3333 862-1897 photos in this Tattler. The three photos were Sherbourne home and garden of Sherri and taken at the Livernois walk-through where Sue McMillan Gary Brown. Our summer Meet and Greets Chesterfield comes to an end at Warrington. Treasurer are a highlight of the season, and we thank 862-6366 This area has never looked so beautiful! the Browns for opening their beautiful home Gail Rodwan to their Sherwood Forest neighbors. GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING Editor 342-5827 Please bring a dish to share. The Browns Residents packed All Saints Church on the Luther Bradley will provide soft drinks; you are welcome to evening of May 11 for a delicious potluck 863-6669 bring your own wine. Mark your calendar supper followed by remarks from President now, and we will see you on July 10. Daniel Clarkson Pro Tem of the Detroit City Council, and 864-2399 Sherwood Forest resident, Gary Brown. If you have questions or would like to host a Robert Gold fall Meet and Greet at your home, contact Gary talked about how difficult it will be for 861-3642 Dan Clarkson at 864-2399 or our city to move forward unless we first find [email protected]. Valerie Leigh a way to balance our city budget. He 345-1826 commended Mayor Bing for making Allen Lewis substantial reductions in the proposed city 342-1858 budget, but expressed the opinion that the Catherine Mayberry Mayor’s cuts were not enough. (Subsequent 862-6342 to our May 11 meeting, Council voted to cut an additional $31.8 million from the budget, Lois E. Primas Patrol Manager the Mayor vetoed the cuts, and Council then 863-0167 overrode the Mayor’s veto. Discussions on the budget, and proposed budget cuts, are ongoing.) Gary stressed that the city currently is not in a position to go forward with the announced plan to replace all street lighting in Sherwood Forest and Green Acres. We will have to make due with the old lighting system for awhile longer. Gary also explained his then-proposed ordinance for the WE MAY NOT GET NEW STREET LIGHTS, “Second Employment Program,” under which off-duty BUT WE CAN LIGHT UP THE FOREST Detroit police officers will be permitted to do private WITH OUR OWN OUTDOOR LIGHTING security work while in uniform and using a police squad car. Officers will be paid an hourly rate, and a We now know there is no money in the city budget to modest user fee will be paid to the city to cover the fund the long-planned replacement of street lights in administrative costs of the program. It is the Sherwood Forest and Green Acres. That doesn’t mean expectation of City Council that this program will be our streets must be unsafe and shrouded in darkness. affordable to neighborhood associations such as ours, While we don’t mean to suggest that the efforts of and that off-duty police officers will provide more individual homeowners can ever replace a good system effective security than unarmed, and less trained, of street lighting, there is a lot we can do as neighbors private security services. to make sure that Sherwood Forest is not in the dark in months and years to come. Just a few days after our meeting, on May 18, City Council passed the ordinance. The Detroit Police There is a variety of effective and affordable outdoor Department is now in the process of working with the lighting, including solar powered lighting, available for unions and the Board of Police Commissioners to installation by individual homeowners. If you drive develop final policies and procedures. It is expected around the neighborhood at night, you will see that that the Board of Police Commissioners will hold some blocks are well-lighted even when the street lights hearings to give citizens the opportunity to share their are out, while others have long stretches of darkness. ideas about how the program should be implemented. That is because some neighbors have installed carefully-placed outdoor lighting, while other neighbors Our thanks to Gary Brown for his work on the “Second never even turn on a porch light. Employment Program” and for his informative remarks at the May 11 meeting. Since we must find a way to live with an inadequate public lighting system, at least for the foreseeable At the meeting we recognized new residents who have future, we urge all residents who have not yet done so moved into Sherwood Forest in the past year, thanked to install some type of lighting on the outside of their our security patrol service for its increased visibility homes and garages. and vigilance in recent months, and enjoyed one of best potluck suppers in recent memory. Our special thanks to GOOD NEWS ABOUT GOOD NEIGHBORS neighbors who volunteered to work in the kitchen that evening, and to Dan Clarkson, the chair of our Special More than one neighbor nominated ERIC BLOUNT to Events Committee, who planned the evening’s program. be our “good neighbor” of the month, and that is hardly surprising. Eric has distinguished himself on his Renfrew block and beyond as a person whose sense of community translates into a more visibly beautiful Sherwood Forest. During the months that renovation was occurring at the new home of Kim and William Tandy on Renfrew, for example, Eric kept the Tandy family updated whenever he saw unfamiliar vehicles or other signs of possibly suspicious activity at the house. The Tandys want to thank Eric publicly for his assistance and concern. Eric serves as a vacant home monitor, but he has never confined his talents to maintaining a yard at just one vacant home. His love for Refrew, and for all of Sherwood Forest, propels him to assist his neighbors whenever they need help in maintaining their property. He is a problem-solver, who, with his wife Verladia, “Baker’s Dozen” Home Tour on Saturday, June 26. brings a “can-do” spirit to every neighborhood issue Vacant home tours will be conducted from noon-4 pm, that arises. followed by an Afterglow from 4-6 pm. Participants in the tours will meet at the Livernois entrance to the Thanks you, Eric, for being our Sherwood Forest “Good University of Detroit Mercy at noon. Neighbor” for the month of June. The purpose of the home tour is twofold: to introduce If you would like to nominate someone to be our next prospective home buyers to 13 neighborhoods in this “Good Neighbor,” please send your information about part of the city and to showcase some of the wonderful, that person to: [email protected]. historic vacant homes available in each neighborhood. Participating neighborhoods are Bagley, Blackstone, SHERWOOD FOREST AWARDED SMALL Detroit Golf Club, Fitzgerald, Green Acres, Greenwich GRANT TO MAINTAIN VACANT Park, Martin Park, Oak Grove, Palmer Woods, Pilgrim PROPERTIES Village, Sherwood Forest, University District and Winship Community. The Community Legal Resources Detroit Vacant Properties Campaign has awarded a modest grant to The cost is $5 per person. To register, call 313-861- Sherwood Forest to maintain our vacant properties. 9626 or email Small stipends are available to residents who expend [email protected]. funds to maintain vacant homes. The money cannot be used to pay professional contractors. One suggestion is that we install outdoor lighting around some of our vacant homes, but no firm decision has been made on this. If you think you may be eligible for a stipend or have a suggestion for how this money should be spent, please contact Sherwood Forest Association president Kim Tandy at [email protected]. BULK COLLECTION DATE REMINDER We will have bulk pickup twice more in 2010, on July 1 and October 1. You may place up to one cubic yard of bulk at your curb no earlier than the evening before the collection date. Yard waste will continue to be picked up on our regular Thursday collection dates. SUMMER IN THE CITY Again, we remind residents that if there is a holiday There are so many wonderful things going on in our during the week, trash will be picked up on Friday city and our neighborhood this summer. Here are just rather than Thursday (unless the holiday falls on a a few of them: Friday). This is a rule that many of us routinely forget. June 24-27 Detroit-Windsor International Film Festival – This year’s third annual film festival will be held on the campus of Wayne State University. To WE WILL WELCOME PROSPECTIVE see the film schedule, go to DWIFF.org. One of the HOME BUYERS TO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD films, “Grown in Detroit,” is about an urban garden ON SATURDAY, JUNE 26 being managed by a public school of pregnant and parenting teens. “Grown in Detroit” is creating a lot The 12th Precinct Neighborhood Coalition, in of “buzz.” conjunction with University Commons, University of Detroit Mercy and Commissioner Keith Williams, will conduct the third annual Home and Neighborhood June 25-27 Jazz Fest in the Woods – Three days of jazz concerts will be held at the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Palmer Woods. Tickets must be purchased in advance.