The Midland Park community is a pretty safe place to live or raise a family, and the residents who gathered Tuesday night to resurrect the community association want to keep it that way.
Mark Weiser, president of the Midland Park Community Association, organized a town hall meeting at Donwood Junior Public School March 4 where residents could not only air concerns about safety and crime, but also get to know their neighbours.
"My goal was really to re-engage the neighbourhood and at the end of the night to be able to stand back and see a bunch of Midland Park residents talking to their neighbours," Weiser said, as his neighbours mingled over coffee and snacks.
The association, which includes the areas from Midland Avenue to about McCowan Road and Ellesmere Road to Lawrence Avenue, has been dormant for a number of years and Weiser is trying to bring it back to life to get the community socializing, as well as watching out for each other.
"We have always had a wonderful heritage of neighbours and community in the Midland Park area," Weiser said.
"In the past six to eight months our literal winter was a figurative winter as well as people were shutting their doors and not saying hello as much," he said.
The past year or so has also seen a rise in graffiti in the area, and while residents understand their community is pretty safe if that's their greatest concern, they want to make sure they do something before vandalism escalates to more serious crimes.
Dave Barnes has lived in the neighbourhood for 10 years. He wants to be involved in the community association and play an active role in the community.
"It's my neighbourhood and things only get done when people are willing to come out and participate," he said.
Barnes said there has been an increase in graffiti on mailboxes, utility boxes and other property in the neighbourhood in the past year.
"Graffiti is certainly an indicator of abuse of the neighbourhood," he said. "I think it scares people. They're afraid it could be a signal of the neighbourhood going downhill."
Staff Sgt. Wade Alphonso from 41 Division was on hand to hear concerns, as was Lesley Chitra from Crime Prevention Association of Toronto, Marie Heron from the Community Police Liaison Committee and Scarborough Centre MPP Brad Duguid.
Alphonso told residents their community isn't a well known one to his officers.
"My office doesn't know a lot about this neighbourhood because it's a good neighbourhood," he said.
He said the graffiti the police has seen from the neighbourhood is not gang related. Statistics show the neighbourhood is a safe one with just some break and enters and robberies in the first two months of the year.
There was also talk of bringing back the Neighbourhood Watch program to the area.
It's an idea both Weiser and Barnes support.