The Allston Civic Association (ACA) met last week in a virtual format with about 30 residents and officials.

The meeting began with the ACA welcoming District D-14 of the Boston Police Department (BPD) Captain Beth Leary, taking over from Captain Wayne Lanchester. Leary had worked in the Hyde Park District E-18 before this in the detectives department, and said she is excited to come to Allston-Brighton.

“I have been with the BPD for 26 years, and coming over from Hyde Park,” she said. “I was in charge of the detectives over there, and I look forward to meeting all of you.”

Outgoing D-14 Community Service Officer Sgt. Edward McMahon went through the crime report for the past month, and he said there were two larcenies from motor vehicles, three residential break-ins, five shoplifting arrests, 21 “other” larcenies (shoplifting and package thefts from stoops, though McMahon noted there were five arrests associated with those thefts), one vehicle larceny (Uber driver left vehicle running), and seven aggravated assaults (three arrests made in relation to those incidents).

McMahon noted that three residential break-ins was remarkably low for the neighborhood, considering students residences are prime targets during college break.

ACA President Tony D’Isidoro gave McMahon his final farewell from the ACA as he is retiring, and welcomed incoming Sgt. Mark Kervin.

“I want to say thank you on behalf of a grateful community, for all your years of service to the City of Boston and specifically Allston-Brighton,” he said. “I consider you a friend. You hit up a community service office where I think the new captain will find out what a great job you guys do. Having the low crime rate we have in Allston-Brighton is not by accident, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years of attention and that office probably spends more time with disadvantaged kids than their own kids and all the programs you guys do for the community. I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

On that note, D’Isidoro said with spring on the horizon and better weather ahead, he’s concerned about graffiti in the neighborhood. He said right now there are residential properties being tagged with graffiti, and while he had in the past supported a graffiti corridor where artists could practice freely around Blanchard’s Liquors, tagging the neighborhood doesn’t sit right.

D’Isidoro said in his neighborhood specifically, there was a tagger going through around the time of the last snowstorm.

“The individual or individuals didn’t let that deter them, and the number of properties in our neighborhood tagged with the same script, including the sofa of the new bakery on North Harvard Street,” he said. “To say that I was pissed off, when we have so many people working so hard to make the best community and neighborhood we can make, I mean nothing cheapens a neighborhood than things just getting tagged randomly. It is, to me, so goddamn silly to see utility poles, mailboxes, hydrants, you name it. And then people’s homes. Just to see people spending an evening going around and tagging people’s homes and businesses in a community? I just can’t make any sense of it.”

D’Isidoro said businesses are being tagged in Brighton Center as well, and while he said District D-14 is doing good work with its one graffiti patrol car, he believes it’s not enough.

“To be fair, it’s got to come from the Mayor’s Office,” he said. “We need a much more robust statement that this is not going to be tolerated in our city.”

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McMahon said the Graffiti Busters will be heading out this spring to help deal with the situation.

“Unfortunately there is only one truck for the whole city, but all I can say is keep putting your 311s in for locations for graffiti busters when they start up again. But if there is any damage to your property or business, come into the station and do a police report,” he said. “The detectives will come out and take some photos and if they can track down these taggers – because it’s usually one or two people doing this. But you’ve got to do a police report so detectives can track that. So when an arrest is made, we can link them back to these other properties that have been damaged.”

Speaking of cleaning up, Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services (ONS) Allston-Brighton Representative Jennifer Roberts said Love Your Block is coming back soon to the neighborhood.

“I am very, very proud to rep Allston-Brighton during Love Your Block time because people show up, and I just love how many people come and volunteer to make the neighborhood look better and clean things up,” she said.

For more information on Love Your Block, go to https://tinyurl.com/4wm8a6ec

D’Isidoro said in other news, the group will be soon meeting in a hybrid format at the Honan Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library for the first time since the pandemic. D’Isidoro said that new equipment is being installed thanks to a community benefit package with Harvard University’s Institutional Master Plan (IMP).

Lastly, development is usually a topic at the ACA, even though building throughout much of the city has slowed down. D’Isidoro said it’s a good sign that things are still getting built in Allston and Brighton, even if some of the projects have lost key elements – homeownership being a particularly barbed loss for the neighborhood – many other neighborhoods are facing, in come cases, complete stoppages of work.

“A lot of projects that have been approved are sitting, waiting for a more favorable building environment in order to begin construction,” he said. “Just lately, we’ve had a few projects that have begun construction. Two-fifty Everett Street, in fact just today they were demolishing the building. That is a big project that will be off and running, and I have been told the Hines project (1270 Commonwealth Ave.), which is the old CVS site, is going to begin construction early April. And it seems like Franciscan Children’s, which just went through an IMP process, started a very exciting development project in terms of building a psychiatric care facility. They seem to be positioning themselves to begin work on the campus fairly soon. So we are doing pretty well.”

For more information on the ACA, go to http://www.allstoncivicassociation.org