Despite cutbacks, CLIP
still keeping Northeast beautiful

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

Operation Safe Streets is long gone. And Mayor John Street’s ambitious Neighborhood Transformation Initiative may be dying on the vine midway through Street’s second and final term of office. But the Community Life Improvement Program is still going strong.
Created in 2002 as Northeast Philadelphia’s version of NTI, CLIP continues to clean up hundreds of neighborhood eyesores every week, despite widespread cutbacks in city spending due to a budget crunch.
During the monthly general meeting of the Upper Holmesburg Civic Association on Aug. 18 at St. Dominic’s Marian Hall, the city’s chief code enforcer for the Department of Licenses and Inspections, Rick Sicinski, told neighbors that there’s still plenty that CLIP can do for them to make their community more livable.
"The goal is to keep up the neighborhoods," said Sicinski, who serves the dual role as the head of CLIP, which is administered directly through the office of City Managing Director Pedro Ramos.
According to Sicinski, the program got its start in the office of City Councilwoman Joan Krajewski (D-6th dist.), who wanted to see her district get its share of NTI funding.
In the early stages of the program, Street wanted to condemn rundown homes in poor areas of the city, demolish them and build replacements. That hasn’t happened on the scale proposed by the mayor. Even so, Krajewski and other Northeast leaders wanted their communities to get some return on their tax dollars, too.
"Joan asked for a piece of the pie from NTI," Sicinski said. "We started out in the 6th district and expanded all the way up to the 10th district, and now we’re down in the Lawncrest area."
The program covers all of the Northeast, which also includes Councilman Brian O’Neill’s 10th district and parts of Rick Mariano’s 7th district.
"That’s as far as we’re going to go because we only have three inspectors," Sicinski said. "And we handle over six-hundred violations a week."
The CLIP office takes in 70 to 80 telephone complaints each day for a variety of neighborhood problems. Common issues are graffiti, overgrown lawns, trash dumping or build-up and dog waste issues.
But many other problems that could be considered neighborhood eyesores fall into CLIP’s jurisdiction.
Property maintenance is one of those. CLIP may cite a property owner for not maintaining windows, doors, a shed or a deck properly, or it may refer the property to L&I if it poses a hazard to the community.
CLIP can also cite a property owner for allowing a tree on his land to grow into a neighboring building and threatening its integrity. However, overhanging trees are not subject to city regulations, as long as they don’t touch the building next door.
Regardless of the issue, if CLIP cites a property owner for violating city code, the owner generally has 10 days to fix it. Otherwise, he can face a fine as well as a bill for the cleanup work, which will be done by city crews, Sicinski said.
Fortunately, the program head added, most property owners heed the initial citations.
"We’re now at a 92-percent compliance rate," Sicinski said.
Amazingly, the program itself employs just six people, working in three crews. Because the summer is their busy season, the crews are about a week behind in responding to neighborhood complaints, Sicinski said.
But delays shouldn’t discourage folks from calling in legitimate concerns. Callers should leave their name, telephone number and the nature of the problem on the answering machine. Calls are confidential, but the CLIP office needs a contact if the information in unclear.
"We need a contact in case the inspector isn’t seeing what you’re seeing," Sicinski said.
The CLIP hot line is 215-683-CLIP.
In other Upper Holmesburg Civic business:
• President Paul Gonsiewski reported that the association will attend the weekly Pennypack Park Concert Series to distribute membership information to concert-goers, many of whom probably live in Upper Holmesburg.
The concerts are held every Wednesday night in the Pennypack Park band shell.
• UHCA zoning chairman Stan Cywinski announced an upcoming zoning hearing for a local day-care center that hopes to expand its operation into an existing building on a neighboring property.
The hearing regarding the Dumpling Grounds, at 4508 Blakiston St., will be on Aug. 30.
A UHCA board member, Amy Gavaghan, is a part-owner and operator of the day-care center. The civic group has taken no formal position on the expansion, but some residents oppose it, including Cywinski. Other neighbors back the expansion.
Gavaghan and Cywinski have met privately to try to reach a compromise on the issue, which was discussed at length at the January UHCA general meeting. No vote was taken on it at that time.
• Residents complained about ongoing illegal activity centered around a couple of public telephones near Cottage and Megargee streets, including suspected drug sales.
One neighbor, Bar Tur, said, "A lot of out-of-state drivers are coming in and using the telephones."
Tur wants the phones removed to prevent drug dealers from doing business on the corner.
• Gonsiewski said that the Upper Holmesburg Town Watch continues to accept new members willing to patrol the neighborhood with a partner for a few hours on the weekends. Volunteers can patrol as little as a couple nights a month.
The Town Watch operates mostly Friday and Saturday nights, from 9 p.m. to midnight. It’s also trying to put together a "late night" crew for the midnight-to-3 a.m. shift.
"That’s when most of the crime is happening," Gonsiewski said.
For information on the Upper Holmesburg Town Watch, call 215-338-2918.
• The next UHCA meeting will be on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. at St. Dominic’s Marian Hall, on Frankford Avenue just north of Blakiston Street. ••