Mr. Smolin/Others of our great community,

I am writing to vent a little about portable basketball goals. Not only are they an eyesore and vehicular obstacle, but also they pose many safety and quality of life concerns.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to go outside to enjoy a beautiful spring evening with your wife, and to have to listen to 10-15 yelling teenagers bouncing a basketball, shouting obscenities, and disrespecting all adjacent homes and any vehicles that may wish to pass while their game is going on (please forgive my run-on sentence). I pick up trash off of my sidewalk regularly, have kids shout at me as I pass by in my car to get into my driveway, and hear the relentless bouncing until 9:30 - 10:00 on a WEEK NIGHT!

So you may be thinking that it's just a localized issue that I have to deal with, but when I go outside at night to take out my trash, and I overhear these kids talking about smoking pot and drinking, I know that it's only a matter of time before other younger kids are influenced by these older kids. Do you have young kids? Do you want them influenced at these neighborhood hangouts? I am not against kids having fun, but it becomes a problem when these facilities are abused such as this.

These portable goals should not be placed within the right-of-way (which starts on the house-side of the sidewalk in front of your house) but rather on the property of the homeowner who purchases this equipment. This way, the users must be invited to play/hang-out/etc. and the homeowner can take better control of this situation. It is inconsiderate of Middletown Village residents and furthermore all general public who have every right to use our public streets.

The fact that Middletown Village has a public park with underutilized basketball facilities is even more frustrating that this condition exists. Why should the surrounding homeowners be inconvenienced because one homeowner doesn?’t want to fix this problem at the source? Any others who stumble upon this posting agree?

Is there anything that our Civic Association can do to alleviate these situations?

Thanks for listening,
Happy M-Town Village Resident (with one minor issue)


By John

Bsktball Hoops and Bad Kids

John -

I copied and pasted your message into an e-mail that I sent to Morris Deputy, the Town Manager. I asked for his help in dealing with the issues that you have raised.

Unfortunatly, you are not the only resident that has brought this issue to our attention. Hopefully the Town or the Police can help. All of us on the Board agreed with you that these kids should not act this way.

Eric

p.s.: I would have cc'd you on the e-mail, but your e-mail address was not listed with your complaint.

Concerned as well

I completely understand where you are coming from and have to agree with you about this issue.

My husband and I have also experienced this in our street and find it very upseting. No relaxing walks can be taken in the evening and getting to our house has oftentimes been difficult.

I will be anxious to see what can be done for this as well.

I experienced this too

I got fed up with the kids being loud and blocking the street. On April 6th I called the cops and was informed that portable hoops are not allowed on public streets. An officer was sent out and the hoop has been removed. I have not seen one game on my street since. They were pretty straight-forward on the legality of the hoop in the road. I hope this helps.