City of Salem’s 6th Clothing and Household Textiles Recycling Drive

In honor of America Recycles Day, celebrated annually on November 15th, SalemRecycles is partnering with Goodwill Massachusetts and SMART (Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association) to host the City of Salem’s 6th Clothing and Household Textiles Recycling Drive. It will be held:

This Saturday, November 19
Riley Plaza (across from the Post Office)
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM

It is your opportunity to donate all usable and questionable items in one central location.
What began as a program to educate the citizens of Salem that used household textiles and clothing can be reused or repurposed, has become over the course of 5 years a sort of pilgrimage. Fittingly it is celebrated the Saturday before Thanksgiving and it has grown with each passing year. Contributors come by car, truck, bicycle, and even by foot. They come because they know those questionable items they don’t think have value can make a difference to someone else.
Do we save the t-shirt with the small stain? Do we hang up the sweater that needs new buttons - the one we keep re-hanging with the belief that this year will be the year we fix it? The items we have in our closets that we feel are not worthy of giving to charity, the old handbag, the belt with the broken buckle, what do we do with these?
This year, as you sort through your “not so wonderful” items, keep in mind that the City of Salem has come up with a solution to help ease your mind and keep those items from heading for the trash. Every week we recycle our papers, glass and metal, but we tend to overlook the textiles we have in our homes.
While most of us are familiar with Goodwill, a charitable industry that provides job training to benefit hundreds of thousands of people each year, many of us are unfamiliar with SMART. Since 1932 SMART has been working with organizations such as Goodwill to recycle, re-use and repurpose all clothing and household textiles that might otherwise end up in the trash.
SMART members, in concert with the charitable industry, divert 2.5 billion lbs. of waste that would otherwise fill our landfills each year. These charitable industries rely on the revenue produced when SMART members buy the unusable textiles to help fund their ongoing community based programs such as the Goodwill job training center right here in Salem. Items such as clothing, dish cloths, curtains, and even shoes can be repurposed into other items such as rags, insulation and carpet underlayment. As long as these are clean and dry (a must) they can find a second purpose.

To find a complete list of all acceptable pieces that you can donate please visit www.salem.com/recycling.  And to learn more about other environmentally friendly programs and resources in Salem, please visit our website at www.greensalem.com.
Please call 978-619-5679 for any specific questions, or e-mail jrose@salem.com
Read more: http://www.salem.com/node/97253

A Parking Petition

A petition to eliminate the tour bus parking on the east side of Holyoke Street that was recently instituted is in the works and will be available to sign at Steve's Market very soon. Apparently the residents of 24 Norman Street are not the only ones in the neighborhood who are upset about the lack of due process, representation and transparency in the city council decision to take away an entire street of local and resident daytime parking in favor of tour buses. The decision, instigated by Kate Fox of Destination Salem, and supported by our ward councilor, Heather Famico, adversely affects not only us, but customers of the businesses on Gedny Street, and even the residents of 10 Norman Street and Barton Square. If we get enough signatures on the  petition, we have a good chance of overturning this decision, as the city councilor vote to do this was very close (6 councilors voted for it, 5 voted against it) I will keep you posted as things develop.

IMPORTANT MEETING TONIGHT!

The recent petition to change the City Ordinance pertaining to Tour Bus Parking and make all of Holyoke Square (east side) Tour Bus parking passed for first passage 2 weeks ago.
Councillors, Sargent, Milo, Lovely and Dibble were opposed.
It only takes (2) votes to make a City Ordinance Change. It will not become law until a 2nd vote is taken this Thursday night at the Oct 13th City Council meeting. The meeting will be on the 2nd floor of City Hall in The City Council Chambers.
Anyone interested can attend the meeting (at 7:00) and they will be able to speak on the issue, if they sign up on the Public Comment Sign Up Sheet located in The City Clerks office (room #1 on the first floor of City Hall) before 6:30.

Latest Update on Holyoke Street

New signs have been installed on Holyoke Street. The entire eastern (Verizon building) side of the street has been turned into tour bus parking. This effectively restricts our parking there to evenings after 6:00 PM until 8:59 AM the following morning. Markwood has been in touch with Ward 7 Councilor Steve Dibble , and Ward 2 Councilor Heather Famico (our ward councilor). For now this is 7 days a week, and there is no indication that it will be only seasonal, (May-November). Be aware that this will mean ticketing and towing if you park there anytime between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM.
If you have issues with this decision, please write and express your displeasure to Heather at hfamico@Salem.com 
 If there is any interest in starting a petition, please contact the author of this blog or Markwood Management.

Take This Sound Test

 

 


Are you watching a movie or TV show on your television, playing a game on your computer, or listening to music on your stereo? Go out into the hallway and close the door. Can you still hear your device plating? Then it is probably too loud.
If you can hear it outside your unit, then your neighbors can hear it too, either down the hallway, through the wall, or the floor. (Headphones might be a great idea).

If you live at 24 Norman Street and don't know it already, you will quickly find out that it is a small building, and there is minimal soundproofing. The building was converted to condos in the 1980's, before newer building codes stipulated more robust soundproofing. For example, in newer construction, there is a minimum of one foot of space between your ceiling and the floor of the unit above you. We don't have that here. Basically your floor is also someone's ceiling.

That means that sound is easily transmitted. Walking heavily, flushing toilets, running your dishwasher, dropping things on the floor all sound like a heard of elephants stampeding, a tropical rainstorm, and a gunshot respectively. Add that to the outside ambient noise of downtown Salem, and you have a recipe for stressful living. Now we all chose to live here, so there is some expectation of noise, but it is a razor-thin line between acceptable and actively annoying.

Be aware of the time of day as well. There are restrictions in the condo bylaws that prohibit any noise between 11:00 PM and 7:00 AM. But I'm sure that if you're playing loud music or hammering something into a wall at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning, you're not going to be engendering much good will from your neighbors.

Here is a link to a blog article titled: "How to Complain About Your Noisy Neighbors Without Being That Guy" , which has some good tips for dealing with sound the almost universal issue of noise. 

This is all a way of saying, please be aware of the level of noise you are making, and try to be considerate of your neighbors. It goes a long way to improving the quality of life here.

UPDATE: PARKING MEETING TONIGHT!

There will be a meeting of the Salem City Council tonight, Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 7:00 PM in the Council Chamber at 93 Washington Street to discuss a new parking arrangement for Holyoke Street.
This meeting is about turning parking spaces on Holyoke Street into tour bus parking spaces.
This means we could potentially lose all of the parking spaces on Holyoke.

The council will also be deciding weather to change this:
"ORDINANCE to amend traffic, chapter 42 Sec, 11: Bus Stops, by deleting Holyoke Square, Bus Stops on the easterly side in a northerly direction, beginning twenty feet from Gedney Street and extending eighty feet. Tour bus parking two hour limit."

and replace it with this:

Holyoke Street, Bus Stops, on the easterly side in a northerly direction, beginning 20 feet from Gedney St. and extending 160 feet. Tour Bus parking Two Hour limit.

Ward Councillor Famico has moved to adopt the first passage. Which means we would keep at least some of the spaces.

If you care about parking on Holyoke Street at all, please consider attending this meeting, or if you cannot make the meeting please call your city councillors. Their phone numbers are on the Salem.com website. Or e-mail them at citycouncilors@salem.com.

Street Parking Changes

In preparation for the annual onslaught of Halloween tourism, Saturday morning the Salem DPW painted several new designated areas on both Holyoke and Norman streets that may greatly impact parking availability both during the month of October, and going forward into winter.
Although the only officially-designated place residents of 24 Norman Street are allowed to park is Riley Plaza, (with our hang tags) many tenants frequently park in the unmetered spaces along Norman Street, directly in front of our building or the shopping plaza next door, or on nearby Holyoke Street.  We recently lost a potential space to a badly-placed handicapped parking space in front of the building. Saturday we lost another one, the space directly in front of that space by the ramp, or "driveway" on the market side of the building. (see photo below)

We are also potentially losing all of our parking on the Verizon building side of Holyoke Street. The Salem DPW painted in two large spaces for tour buses to park on Holyoke.

Although tour buses and Verizon trucks have parked there in the past, this may indicate that a new, officially-posted "Tour Buses Only" area may be enforced with ticketing, or towing. Weather this will be only during the month of October, or permanently, remains to be seen.
There was no notification from the city to Markwood Management that any of these changes were taking place.
With the new Merchant hotel leasing parking space in Riley Plaza, two new hotels scheduled to open within the year (one on Essex Street, one on Washington Street) and the city seemingly favoring merchants and tourists over residents, parking scarcity is once again becoming critical issue. 

For now, just be aware of these changes and be careful to look for any new signs or posted regulations. We will post any new information we receive here on the blog.