(At Least One) Step in the Right Direction!

Yesterday morning, I was taking my exercise walk around the Village.  On 119th St, coming east from Griffing, there was a large project going on to remove Australian Pines.  In the afternoon, I was driving south on 10th Avenue from 119th St, and in the first couple of blocks, some other large Australian Pines were in large cut pieces.  Somebody's decided to go to town on Australian Pines!

The last time we had significant tree-trimming project was before 2016, when Heidi Siegel was the Manager.  I'm going to take the liberty to assume that 1) removal of these Australian Pines was Al Childress' idea, and 2) that the Commission didn't try to stand in his way.  (Which, frankly, it couldn't.)

This is great news.  In at least the past 10 years, Australian Pines have been falling down.  And they're not native to our part of the world.  They were planted by Arthur Griffing, because they soak up a lot of water, which was an advantage to him, because it created more sellable land.  Griffing was very interested in sellable land.  Lots are mostly small here, and there are essentially no sidewalks (except around the recreation building and fields).  He wanted to milk the Village for land to sell.

And Australian Pines not only don't provide much shade, but what they do "provide" is sap, which drips onto the ground, and kills anything that would otherwise grow there.

I haven't asked around, but I'm practically salivating in temptation to imagine that Al, or someone, also wants us to have medians that don't look shockingly embarrassing.  Boy, would that be a huge further step in the right direction. What if the medians looked nice, and also had enough development that people couldn't drive over them to avoid having to go all the way to the end of a short block to take a U-turn?  And if people couldn't park on them?  I've been fussing about this for almost 20 years, and it's sort of disorienting to think someone actually cares, about the medians and about the Village.  Frankly, I had sort of given up.

And what's next?  Do we re-institute police patrolling on 6th Avenue, and even bring back the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs?

You see what I mean about disorienting.  It's like living in a self-respecting municipality.  This will take some getting used to.  First, we refused to do glaring things to uplift ourselves, and in the past 9+ years, we've elected one tragic Commission after another.  Are we turning ourselves around, and into something we've never had the vision to be?  If we are, I might have to consider offering to donate another sculpture.