by Allan Appel
Why were loud, alarming booms heard, at the rate of several per hour, over three days in late March throughout northern Fair Haven?
And why is graffiti once again making a serious and un-wanted resurgence along Fair Haven thoroughfares, and why does the city seem all but giving up on attending to the problem?
Answers to those quality-of-life puzzles were revealed at Thursday night’s regular meeting of the Fair Haven Community Management Team (FHCMT).
About 40 people had settled into the folding chairs of the community room at the Fair Haven Branch Library and around 20 joined online as the Livable City Initiative’s (LCI) Neighborhood Specialist Magaly Fernandez was giving her brief anti-blight round-up.
When she concluded, an older Lombard Street resident (who preferred not to give her name) asked if Fernandez could explain the loud booms or bangs that the resident had been hearing around March 21 or 22. “They went on all night,” said the resident.
And, as it turned out, they went on for days.
“That was from Chuck & Eddie’s,” said Fernandez, referring to the auto junk yard on Middletown Avenue. “There was a mistake in their system.”
Having lived near farms, the Lombard neighbor instantly knew what Fernandez was talking about, even if many of us in the gathering still were slower in apprehending.
“You mean a crow cannon?” she said.
“Right,” said Fernandez.
You expect that in the country, said the neighbor, where the farmers have these noise and bang-making devices (usually powered by propane) that shoo away crows and other scavengers attracted to the property.
But in the city?
Yes, in the city, explained District Manager Sgt. Chris Alvarado, who took over the explanation from Fernandez.
Chuck & Eddie’s Used Auto Parts, located at 190 Middletown Ave., is just down the block from the municipal transfer station at 260 Middletown.
Chuck & Eddie’s has a roof where birds flock and perch to have the best look-out for what’s most tantalizing down below at the auto junk yard and over in the landfill.
So, likely not crows, but seagulls?
Yes, indeed that was the case but, said Alvarado, it took him a few days, from March 21 to 24, to figure it out. He was able to use intel from various neighbors, who phoned in to him their concern, and his own driving up and down Middletown Avenue to figure it out.
“At first I thought it [the boom] was someone hunting,” he recalled, “but it was too controlled for that, going every fifteen minutes.”
A resident did the same patrol up and down Middletown Avenue trying to figure out the noise and reported to him, he said. Finally Alvarado stopped by the gas station at 170 Middletown Ave., and someone there pointed him to Chuck & Eddie’s Used Auto Parts down the block.
“They were very good,” Alvarado said, when he visited and they realized that the device they use to keep away the gulls from their roof – their “cannon” – likely had been moved out of place, probably by the snow and snow melt.
It was no longer pointing at the birds, on the roof, but down river so that a good part of Fair Haven was hearing the boom and echoing reverberations.
They repositioned the device, and problem solved.
In a phone interview after the meeting with a staffer at Chuck & Eddie’s, the Independentwas told the device in question makes a noise “like a fire cracker or bottle rocket, but without the boom.”
The staffer at Chuck and Eddie’s, who declined to give their name, added that the dump, the city’s transfer station down the block, also has an anti-gull noise device in place, but its sound is more akin to a whistle.
The devices go off every ten or fifteen minutes, the staffer reported, but, yes, the “birds always find a way and are still there.”
But the noise is not. Mystery One solved.
Mystery Two: the profusion of graffiti all along Chapel Street, especially noticeable on the bridge going over the Mill River, and along James Street.
“Where is the city? Why can’t something be done about this?” asked a troubled resident of Front Street, who declined to give his name. He said he reported the matter several times to SeeClickFix, and after a while, the account on the reporting site, which the city uses to track such blight issues, indicated the matter was closed. Yet the problem was very much still there.
“Graffiti is taking over Fair Haven,” he said.
“No,” replied Fernandez, on behalf of LCI. The culprit, she explained, is the weather. In the winter, graffiti violations cannot be easily dealt with because of the cold and so they tend to pile up.
“When the temperature is below 60, the power washing doesn’t work, and the painting can’t be done,” she said.
In response to another questioner from the audience, Fernandez offered a reassurance that the graffitied property owners “have already been noticed.” That is, they’ve received official communication from the city that they are responsible for removal of graffiti from their property.
If they ask the city to do the removal, however, there’s a problem, at least at present. “At the moment,” Fernandez added, the city doesn’t have a graffiti removal contractor so it’s on the owner.
“OK,” said Lee Cruz, co-chair of the FHCMT, who was helming the meeting and moving things along. “Sixty degrees! Not ’til the end of April, that’s a reality we have to deal with.”