As of March 1, the City of Dallas is changing to once-a-week trash and recycling pick-up. That will require switching from bags to using the large gray trash bins. Because many of our East Dallas alleys are too narrow to accommodate the bins as well as a garbage truck, we (including my own household) are switching from alley pick-up to curb pick-up.
The city laid the groundwork by building the trail, but like the Katy Trail, it’ll be the friends groups that take the Santa Fe Trail to the next level. The surrounding community, the Santa Fe Trail Neighborhood Association and Crime Watch, and the Friends of the Santa Fe Trail are working together to make this a clean, safe trail. My hat’s off to them for adopting this new trail to make it a great asset for East Dallas.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep pushing the city to put in stop lights/signs for traffic at Beacon and other major streets. Right now, there are no stop signs for cars, but there ARE stop signs for trail users, if you can believe that. I’ve never seen an SUV hit by a pedestrian, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Deputy Chief Vince Golbeck provided the following update on East Dallas carjackings late this afternoon:
I know there is a lot of concern regarding the recent individual robberies that have occurred in and/around your neighborhoods. This is an update to the bulletin I sent at 4:00 pm. I want to clarify some misinformation that is being distributed through private individuals’ email networks that I’ve received since so please share the following with them:
A carjacking incident involving a wf/35 occurred today approximately 1:25 p.m. in the 6300 block of Martel Avenue. There were no other robberies today in this area. The driver had her 7 y/o daughter and 9 y/o son in the vehicle when she was backing out of her driveway into the rear alley. She exited vehicle to move a trash container when the suspect approached her and was wearing an orange/yellow reflective work type vest over dark blue sweatshirt. Suspect had a toy chrome handgun that we recovered at the location after the complainant struggled with the suspect since he was driving away with her children in the vehicle. The suspect did allow the children to exit the vehicle. There were no injuries. Suspect fled in complainant’s vehicle – 2005 Green Ford Expedition. He matches the description of eight previous incidents since February 5th that have occurred in Central, Northeast, Southwest, and one possibly out of town. Several of the vehicles have been recovered in South Central Division.
There was information being distributed that there was another offense today and that it occurred at Stonewall Jackson Elementary and that is not the case. There were concerns of the elementary school being in lockdown but the principal can make that decision for student safety reasons, however, the incident did not occur near the school.
Further Suspect description is: Black Male, 35-50, 5’8″ – 6’2″, 160-180 pounds. Suspect may be unshaven with a little gray and have missing or gaps in teeth. Also please confirm any additional information with the Dallas Police Department before distribution and we’ll keep you posted on any updates.
We had added additional patrols in the neighborhoods, which will continue, and intel has been distributed Departmental wide.
Hey, everyone. Sorry this took so long to post. First, I want to thank everyone for participating in the recent neighborhood vote on recycling options. There were several neighborhoods in East Dallas that were not eligible to use the new blue recycling bins because their recycling is picked up in the alleys. Most of our East Dallas alleys are too small for the regular recycling trucks, so special, smaller trucks have to be used and the recycling has to be picked up manually.
Many residents contacted me to indicate they would like to use the blue bins. I’ve worked hard with our Sanitation Department to figure out a way to do this, so we mailed ballots to residents in the manual pick up areas to see if they wanted to switch to blue bins picked up at the curb.
The votes are in, and all but one neighborhood decided to switch to the Big Blue recycling roll carts at the curb every other week. The change in service will start August 1st . See the map below to see if your neighborhood will be changing to blue bin recycling as of August 1st:
If you have not already ordered your Big Blue, please do so by calling 311, or go online at www.dallascityhall.com to request one. The City will deliver your cart in 10-14 days. If you have already ordered the cart, there is no need to re-request.
Starting August 1st, the City’s Sanitation Services Department will collect your recyclables every-other-week – right at your curbside. Just wheel your cart or carry your blue bags to the curb by 7:00 a.m. on the collection day. No worries about which day
Over 40 volunteers turned out today to help rid East Dallas of graffiti. Swiss Avenue resident Jeff Bryan organized the paint-out to help us take back our community from vandalism. Graffiti is not just a nuisance. It lowers our property values, it’s unsightly, it makes it less likely that businesses will want to relocate in our area, and there is a direct correlation with crime. I will be working with Jeff to develop a pilot program in our area to clean up graffiti, which, if successful, I would like to see us take city-wide.
We were able to clean up about 6 sites — buildings, fences, a community basketball court — that had all been hard hit by taggers and gang graffiti. We painted most of the sites, but we also had a company called Pro-Chem volunteer their expertise and products to chemically remove graffiti from a community church’s concrete basketball court. Check out the pictures.
Residents from East Dallas came out in force, as well as city employees including Kathy Davis (Code Inspection Director), Gary Middleton (Code Inspection), several police officers, and other city staff. Many thanks for making this event a success.
Jeff would like to see the clean-up effort on a monthly basis, so stay tuned for our next paint out!
