Bright sunshine and a refreshing spring breeze greeted Mayor Martin J. Walsh as he mixed and mingled with residents from around the South End at a coffee hour on Monday morning, May 19 in Ringgold Park. About 65 people, including neighbors, city officials and a few candidates for office, nibbled Dunkin Munchkins, coffee and fruit medley from co-sponsors, Dunkin Donuts and Whole Foods Market, while chatting in the park. The event also offered information and practical gifts from city agencies such as the Office of Emergency Management, the Food Initiatives Office and Boston Parks and Recreation Department (BPRD), which coordinated the event.

After circulating among the crowd for about 20 minutes, Walsh addressed attendees with an introduction by BPRD interim commissioner Christopher Cook. In keeping with the setting and the strong BPRD presence at the event, Walsh offered brief remarks emphasizing his administration's commitment to the city's open spaces. "I want to thank you all for your support of this great park. When you walk into a park or a school that is performing, you can see the involvement of people in the neighborhood. Parks, open space and cleaning the streets are priorities of mine. Free music festivals and getting people excited about their neighborhoods are important to my administration," Walsh said. Encouraging community participation, Walsh continued, "We are going to make sure that we strengthen our parks and cleaning our streets, but it also takes neighborhood responsibility. We want to make sure that in every neighborhood, people clean up in front of their house to make sure we have the cleanest city in the country."

When Walsh concluded his comments and solicited questions, a woman raised the subject of composting and mentioned City Soil, a small, local that facilitates garden and kitchen waste composting, rooftop gardening, and growing programs in schools; and Bootstrapping, a company that collects kitchen waste. The mayor responded, "We are all over it. We are working with some of the city councilors who have made it a priority. Composting was a big issue in the mayor's campaign. We had a forum at the Copley library where we talked about recycling and composting. We are looking at a couple of ideas for composting. One is having it at the farmer's markets and the second is whether we can have it in some section of the city by the end of the year, like JP or the South End." Addressing the need to increase the city's recycling, Walsh said, "I come from the State House, where every office had a black barrel and a blue barrel. In City Hall, I don't know the color blue exists." He added, "Part of our trash contract is about having recycling in parks." One South End resident hoped to get the mayor's ear one-on-one on another issue, the closing of the Frontage Road methadone clinic. The resident, who used methadone to become drug-free decades ago and subsequently had a successful career, was concerned that addicts without insurance would no longer have access to the help they need.

Register of Probate candidates Felix D. Arroyo and Martin Keogh shook hands and made their pitches to neighbors, while Doug Bennett, a candidate for Suffolk County sheriff, outlined his plan to assist recently released prisoners in returning to the workforce. He said, "As sheriff, I am going to create a program similar to the Works Progress Administration that Franklin Delano Roosevelt created in 1935 except it will be on the county level. The issue that we have in Boston, Chelsea, Winthrop and Revere is that half of the people who come out go back to incarceration within three years because no one is giving them a shot; no one is giving them a job. I am going to work with the mayors of Boston and Revere, Winthrop's town manager and Chelsea's City Manager where if you don't have a job and no one's giving you a chance, you can come to me, the sheriff, and I am going to find you work, get you training and get you a job. The only way we can lower crime and violence is by giving people economic opportunity." Bennett put a unique spin on the familiar image of political hopefuls kissing babies, holding his own small son Hunter in his arms and stopping to give him a peck from time to time. Register of Probate competitors Felix D. Arroyo, a former City Councilor At Large whose son, Felix G. Arroyo, is Mayor Walsh's Chief of Health and Human Services, and Martin Keogh, an attorney from West Roxbury who ran for City Council last year, made the rounds to introduce themselves to potential supporters. Arroyo was sanguine on his campaign so far. "We have been getting good money, which is amazing. When people give you their money, they are putting their trust in you by investing in you. For me, this is very significant."

In addition to tasty breakfast treats, the event featured popular parting items participating agencies, such as the Office of Emergency Management's portable weather-band radios with built-in flashlights, vegetable seeds from the Office of Food Initiatives and potted marigolds from BPRD.

In addition to the sizable contingent from BPRD, other city officials in attendance included Carolyn McNeil, Director of the Boston Police Department's Neighborhood Crime Watch program and Brian Swett, Chief of Environment and Energy for the City of Boston. BPRD's maintenance foreman for the South End, Bruce Sprinkle, professed a genuine enthusiasm for his job of tending the parks. Chatting with Cook and BPRD General Superintendent James Sheehan, Sprinkle confessed, "I actually like cutting the grass. I take pride in cutting it straight, and I enjoy looking at it afterward."