The Cinder Path

The city published its small capital fund for 2027 on November 24, and line 31 is ours: $86,000 for lighting on the Tallow Hill path. That is the cinder path, all 0.4 miles of it, from the Dorrit Avenue gate to the back fence of Tallow Hill Elementary.

Anyone who walks a child home in December knows why it matters. By 4:30 the path is dark, and the long way round by road adds eleven minutes.

We first asked in the spring of 2024, with a petition that 412 of you signed. We asked again at three budget hearings. Bernadette Osei, who chairs the association, spoke at all three. “By the third one they were finishing my sentences,” she says. “I took that as a good sign.”

There will be 14 lamps, one about every 50 yards. They are warm white and shielded, so the light falls on the path and not into bedrooms, and they switch off between 11 pm and 5 am.

That last part was a compromise with the nine households whose yards back onto the path. Walt Ferreira lives in one of them. He asked for it at the October meeting and got it. “I'd like to keep seeing the stars from my kitchen,” he says.

The crew closes the school half first and the Dorrit Avenue half second, so one end is always open. If the weather behaves, the lamps are lit by Friday, February 26.

What we did not get: the second bench, and new cinders for the stretch that floods. Both go back on the list for 2028.