Notes from this week’s North Delridge Neighborhood Council meeting: Hours after the meeting, NDNC co-chair Mike Dady sent around photos including the one above, as a hopeful note looking ahead to this afternoon’s tour of Delridge-area problem properties: That was the scene exactly three years ago, he noted, right across the street from what is currently the temporary home of Chief Sealth High School. Dady recalled spending months trying to get the property’s previous owner to clean it up; finally it was sold, and the new owner quickly moved to get rid of the blight and move toward the development that’s now gone up on the site. This afternoon at 2:30, starting from Delridge Uptown Espresso, Dady will lead a tour of current problem properties, expected to include two city councilmembers and two city department heads (you’re invited too!). As he said at Wednesday night’s NDNC meeting, he isn’t just looking for something to be done about these specific sites – he’s hoping city leaders can be convinced to take action to toughen the laws regarding vacant properties, citywide. “They’re causing a lot of grief,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be this way … We have a chance to get something done.” That discussion started Wednesday night’s meeting, but other big items were on the agenda, including a major change for the playground project North Delridge residents have been involved with — read on:

Another major headline during the meeting at Delridge Library came from Betsy Hoffmeister, who has been working for more than a year on a proposal to revamp the playground at Cottage Grove Park — first, to add equipment for a “tot lot”; then, to look at repurposing what’s already there. Cost has proven prohibitive for the all-volunteer effort she’s led – just when they seemed to be making headway, repeatedly, they’d find out that what they wanted to do, however modest, carried an immense price tag.

But she told of a new effort to which she is proposing throwing the money and volunteer pledges gathered so far: She says there’s a new proposal to revitalize the aged playground at Delridge Community Center, and that, she said, would benefit “thousands of children including the community center’s preschool and afterschool programs, summer camp, wading pool, and the walking area (in surrounding neighborhoods.”

She said this plan will be a go or a no-go by April 30th (we have a message out to community-center leadership in hopes of finding out more for a followup story) and if it doesn’t fly, “we’ll go back to Cottage Grove and start over.” The group voted to support Hoffmeister’s proposal.

NDNC co-chair Jay Mirro talked about the Brandon Street Natural Area, where he and other volunteers planted 500 native plants during the last two work parties, and are hoping to “get a few hundred more native plants in the ground” during the next work party, 10 am-2 pm April 18th. “It’s also Earth Day, so if you’re going to volunteer, this is the month and weekend to do it,” Mirro said.

A week after that, it’s NDNC’s next Adopt-a-Street – everybody is welcome, meet at the community center at 10 am; you can help for any amount of time you can spare – once again the Chief Sealth PTSA will be cleaning Delridge from Brandon to Orchard on the same day. Refreshments are expected, and vest and grabber will be provided.

One other item on the agenda is making the rounds of other community groups too – voting which potential Neighborhood Street Fund projects to support, as the next stage in a long process that is required before these types of proposals get funding from the city.

The group voted to support five projects on the list of 14 presented for consideration, not all of which were in their jurisdiction — trash cleanup along 28th/30th/Yancy, traffic calming near 26th and Genesee, traffic calming on 26th between Alaska and Edmunds, and a traffic circle in South Delridge, on Henderson.

The North Delridge Neighborhood Council meets the first Wednesday of each month, 6:30 pm, Delridge Library. Don’t forget – today’s problem-properties tour starts from Delridge Uptown Espresso at Delridge/Andover, 2:30 pm.