Crime, Traffic & Development Top Fall Meeting Discussion

Last week’s Highlands Community Association’s Fall Meeting featured wide ranging discussion on the state of our local community as it emerges from a pandemic and wrestles with challenges of crime, traffic and development.

Please click here to read the Highlands Community Association Fall Meeting minutes prepared by HCA Secretary Margaret Sears Lindley.

• Mayor Mike Purzycki shared data that cities with clean, attractive streets, rehabbed homes, and access to health care, training, and employment opportunities experience a 20-30% decrease in crime. To that end, the Mayor said he will direct much of Wilmington’s American Rescue Plan funding to cleaning up priority areas.
• Wilmington Police Department’s Captain Wilfredo Campos spoke to the perceived rise in neighborhood’s theft issue, and urged residents to a) report all incidents b) avoid leaving one’s keys, change, etc in an unattended.
• Representative Gerald Brady spoke, amongst other things, about redistricting, noting that the Delaware General Assembly will reconvene in November. It will act on reapportionment, a required redrawing of legislative districts based on the most recent federal Census data.  The Highlands District is slated to become part of the 12th District, which Representative Krista Griffith currently represents. Visit legis.delaware.gov for the proposed maps
• Senator Sarah McBride encouraged residents to join discussion regarding capping I-95, a plan that will involve putting a ceiling on the subterranean portions of I-95 with a park on top in order to reunite neighborhoods that 1960’s-era construction severed. 
• HCA Representatives also shared updates on local real estate development (ex: Gibraltar, Forty Acres Firehouse, etc), events (Halloween and Fall Food Drive), and programing (HCA newsletter, survey, and Live).
• Tower Hill Head of School, Bessie Speers, and Councilmen Nathan Field and James Spadola also shared updates.

Please click here to read the Highlands Community Association Fall Meeting minutes in its entirety.

Bring your questions for Mayor Mike Purzycki when he joins Wilmington’s only neighborhood interview show, Highlands Live, Wednesday, October 27 at 7pm via Zoom (link here).