Residents at the Waverly Farms and Villas and Cherry Creek Apartments are through complaining about the gang-bangers who’ve been messing with what should be a safe and pleasant summer.

With the help of Safe Streets’ Darren Pen, they’ve organized.

Tonight, they’re inaugurating the push with their first National Night Out.

Their complexes are among several east of Interstate 5 and north of South 96th Street, and they have a unique problem. Though most of their neighborhood is in Tacoma, they also have an orphan slice of Lakewood, across the freeway from the rest of the city.

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An application to build a cell phone tower near the corner of South 48th Street and Yakima Avenue is on hold following the discovery of another tower nearby.

The application, which is opposed by the South End Neighborhood Council, was placed on hold March 2, said Charla Heutinck, land use administration planner for the city.

The applicant, T-Mobile, must provide the city with a technical reason why the new tower cannot be co-located with the existing tower at 4818 South J Street, Heutinck said.

If the city has not heard from T-Mobile after 120 days, officials may close out the application, Heutinck said. So far, the city has not heard from T-Mobile, she said Thursday.

The South End Neighborhood Council objects to the location of the proposed tower in an empty lot next to the old Superior TV building, 4638 S. Yakima Ave., arguing that it poses a potential health risk because at 59-feet 11-inches it would not be tall enough to clear some of the surrounding homes.

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The Metro Parks crew trying to pull a submerged car out of Wapato Lake stopped Wednesday afternoon to come up with a better plan.

They’d towed a dock to the beach near the car. They had a Bobcat on shore. They had a sturdy chain with a hook at the end. And they had Josh Azinger in a rowboat, trying to hook the car visible about a yard under the surface.

They did not have a swimmer in the water, which the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department is monitoring. Until July 25, the lake had been unsafe for fishing

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Let’s call it Word on the Water today.

I’ve been at Wapato Park this morning, watching a Metro Parks crew try to pull a long-submerged car out of the lake. They’ve broken for lunch and expect to be back on the job around 1 p.m. It’s interesting, amusing and mildly exciting. I mean, how often, outside of the movies, do you get to see a mystery car pulled out of the water?

If you’re having a lazy afternoon and can break away, the action’s by the bath house off of Sheridan

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