Just a perfect day…
Top photo: Downtown High School students safely enjoying Frisbee football
Hyannis – It was nice to see Sturgis Charter School students frolicking and enjoying a nearly perfect day on the downtown village green.
There is nothing better than seeing good kids enjoying their lunch break in an area that has recently been riddled with drugs and other forms of criminal mischief.
Police have noticeably stepped-up riffraff cleanup efforts, making the park far safer and more pleasant for HyTown “yutes.”
Good job BPD (please keep it up).
Now hopefully our town leaders will take an honest look at the problem of having too many downtown welfare agencies with disruptive clients.
Sure, we still need to look after and care for the less fortunate. But locating all these programs and agencies smack-dab in the middle of our historic downtown area is self-destructive.
Hyannis, especially the Main Street area, is a huge part of our overall tourism brand. There has to be a better place to service so many criminally disruptive clients.
Is it time to start requiring these well-intentioned agencies to be more responsible for security in the immediate downtown area? Or is it time to consider making more logical provisions elsewhere for these much needed services?
How do we make the region’s largest tourism center safer, while still caring for those in need?
As one of my favorite local characters puts it, “We’re shooting our foot in our mouth!” (Which makes perfect sense to anyone who grew up in the greater HyTown area… we have a unique HyTown-way of summing things up, it’s a blessing actually…)
We need a pristine family-friendly downtown campus for shoppers, students, and people committed to basically behaving themselves. Do we really need to concentrate all of our clinics, experimental programs, shelters, and state welfare agencies right in the middle of the Cape’s main downtown hub?
Robust policing is a start. But it is not a panacea.
As I was typing this, police and rescue workers assisted a female assault victim right in front of town hall. It is believed the incident involves a client from a nearby homeless shelter. Police are still checking…
Wake up HyTown, we had one nearly perfect day, lets take action and put together a string of them!
In other news:
PHOTO: Downtown decoy gets fresh inspection sticker! Click here to see yesterday’s report on this subject.
9/24/2013
Robert Bastille, HyannisNews.com
P.S. Tonight’s nearly perfect HyTown Vignette is brought to you by Mr. Lou Reed. [Press play]
