Charlestown residents to John Neace (and Bob Hall): "We ask you now: please abandon your plans to raze and replace our homes in Pleasant Ridge."

Are Deaf Gahan's ears burning yet?

Your desire to bulldoze our entire neighborhood is neither just nor transparent. It is unjust to tell us–after decades of pouring care and love into our homes and being responsible homeowners, who have every right to keep what we’ve worked so hard to own–that we have to give everything up so you can make money.

And when you work out a backdoor deal with Mayor Hall, designed to drive our property values down so that eminent domain will be cheap and easy–that’s just immoral.

We love our homes. Your properties may be rotting around us, but we’re not going anywhere.

The web site address is here: DearJohnNeace.com

Timing of anti-Pleasant Ridge development banner removal questioned, by Danielle Grady (Tom May the Hard Way)

CHARLESTOWN — For around two weeks, the truck with an illegal banner sat on Harold Goodlett’s property.

“John Neace: Stop destroying our neighborhood,” it read, underneath an even larger address for a website telling the story of the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood.

But it wasn’t until the truck and banner were moved to a prominent location along Charlestown’s Founder’s Day parade route that a property owner received a call from the city, requesting that the sign be removed lest a citation be issued.

The city is calling the timing a coincidence, a sudden realization by the building commissioner that the sign violated the city’s zoning ordinance, brought upon by research on a separate, but similar violation. The Pleasant Ridge Neighborhood Association doesn’t think that’s the real impetus.