The residents of Woodhaven are ushering in the a season by doing a little Spring cleaning, and raising a little cash for the Woodhaven-Richmond Hill Volunteer Ambulance Corps at the same time!
The Woodhaven Residents' Block Association will be holding their first ever "311 Day" on Saturday, March 31st. On that day we will ask residents to take a walk -- literally. Go outside and walk around your block. Make it two or three blocks, further if you feel ambitious. And make note of every single reportable condition you see.
Look for graffiti on the walls of private homes, or on the doors of garages. Look for potholes that need repaired, or other dangerous conditions. Look for abandoned homes or illegal conversions. Basically, make note of anything around your house that has a negative impact on our community. Write down a description and write down the precise location.
Once you get home, start calling each and every item into 311 - but please make sure you write down each complaint number and pass them along to the WRBA. In some cases, you may get passed along to a different agency (e.g., Buildings Department, or Con Ed), write down the complaint number they give you. And if you collect so many complaints that you don't have time to report them all, send them to us because we will have volunteers standing by to call them in.
Our goal is to report at least 100 separate items in a single day. One hundred items in Woodhaven that need to be corrected, cleaned or repaired. As you walk or drive around this neighborhood we're sure you see plenty of things that need cleaned up or fixed. Well, it isn't going to happen if it doesn't get reported.
Once we're finished, we will follow-up on each of these items at the end of every month and publish statistics on how many of them have been addressed. This will be our way of determining how well the 311 system works for us. The city is supposed to clean up graffiti within 35 days of it being reported. We will see how well they are living up to their own standards.
So far, so good - but here is where it gets really interesting. We have a few sponsors who are supporting our efforts to clean up Woodhaven. For example, some folks are pledging to give ten cents per 311 call made. So if the residents end up reporting 100 conditions, that person would be on the hook for 10 bucks. At twenty-five cents per 311 call, they'd end up donating 25 dollars. And just like the Walk-A-Thon, you can max out at a certain amount - so you can pledge twenty-five cents per call, but specify that you don't want to give more than 15 dollars.
And all of the money that is collected, every single dollar, will be donated to the Woodhaven-Richmond Hill Volunteer Ambulance Corps, a truly deserving organization that has been serving this community for over 45 years. In summary, we're cleaning up Woodhaven, measuring the effectiveness of 311 and holding a fundraiser for the Volunteer Ambulance Corps, all at the same time. It's a Win-Win-Win.
We need sponsors, and we need people to hit the streets and report the issues that plague us. If you are interested in either, email us at [email protected] or call us at 718-296-3735. You can make a difference. Get involved with the WRBA and we'll show you how.
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