After appearing in Boston Municipal Court last week, graffiti vandal Danielle Bremner is due back in court on May 20 to face 35 counts of tagging properties in the city.
According to Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley, Bremner, a 27-year-old New York resident, is charges with tagging one property in East Boston and 34 additional sites in the Back Bay. Her alleged tags in the Back Bay include 24 on Newbury Street, six on Commonwealth Avenue and one each on Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield and Gloucester streets.
In 2006, Bremner was first arrested for tagging locally in Brighton, where she was arrested in the vicinity of fresh graffiti with several pans of paint. The case was resolved that same year when she “admitted to facts sufficient for a finding of guilty,” Wark said.
After the incident in Brighton, additional specimens in Boston were identified and linked to Bremner. Authorities learned that she was abroad, and Bremner was later arrested when she re-entered the country.
Sources said Bremner and her boyfriend, Jim Clay Harper, were returning from a tour of Europe, where they tagged properties in 10 countries.
Bremner also faces charges in New York after she turned herself in on April 1 to face charges for tagging trains in Queens, according to published reports. Last summer, police raided her home and found 450 cans of spray paint, acid and ink, and countless doodles bearing her tags, "Erin," "Dani" and "Utah”. Bremner was charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti and possessing graffiti tools and faces up to seven years in prison if convicted. She also faces similar charges in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and France.
Ann Swanson, who co-chairs the volunteer organization Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay’s Graffiti GRABBers with Kathleen Alexander, was present for Bremner’s arraignment at Boston Municipal Court last September and pledged to continue attending her Boston court dates.
“We’ll go to court as many times as we have to, to see this resolved,” Swanson said. “We’re trying to put the message out there that we don’t want people coming from other parts of the country and the world to vandalize our community.”
Graffiti GRABBers provided Detective Billy Kelly of the Boston Police Department with a notebook containing pictures of graffiti, victim statements and other evidence that was instrumental in building the case against Bremner, Swanson said.

While summer is traditionally a time when children lose sight of schoolwork, the Learning Project Elementary School is offering a program for kids from throughout the city that combines academics with the experience of sailing on the Charles River.
August Scholars, a tuition-free program that runs from July 20 through August 7, is open to 15 Boston children who are preparing to enter the fifth and sixth grades. The school launched pilot program for eight children last year at 107 Marlborough St., in partnership with two local nonprofits, Community Boating and Hill House. This year, Kristina Royal, a fourth-grade teacher at the school who served as the sole academic instructor for the program last summer, is returning and will be joined by a second teacher.
Every weekday, participating kids arrive at the Learning Project for several hours of intensive schoolwork, focusing on reading comprehension, writing and math, specifically designed to meet their individual academic needs. Following lunch and a brief recess, the children and their teachers walk to Community Boating’s site on the Esplanade for sailing and kayaking lessons. Kids who remain for the rest of the day are then brought to Hill House, where they join other children in the summer program at the Mt. Vernon Street community center.
Andrew Gallagher, the Learning Project’s director of school advancement, said the August Scholars program has already paved the way for participants’ future success in the classroom.
“It provided a really close, intimate environment for the kids and allowed them to see the teacher as an aid because of the close interaction,” he said. “It gave the kids an eagerness to learn.”
Gallagher said the sailing component of the program helps build confidence and promote teamwork. Each child will also leave the program certified by Community Boating to take a boat out by himself or herself, he said.
As for the future of the August Scholars, Gallagher hopes the program becomes a model for partnerships between other schools and youth-serving organizations and sees the extracurricular offerings expanding beyond sailing.
“Any number of recreational components could work,” he said. “They just have to be fun and build confidence and teamwork.”
August Scholars is now accepting applications for the 2009 season. All Scholars must be 10 years old on July 20, entering the fifth or sixth grade in September and able to swim 75 yards. For more information, contact the Learning Project Elementary School at 617-266-8427 or via e-mail to tlp@learningproject.org, or visit www.learningproject.org on the Web.

Ellen Rooney has stepped down from her position as executive director of the Beacon Hill Business Association (BHBA) to serve on the city’s Election Commission.
Rooney, a longtime Back Bay resident, joined the BHBA in January 2007. In a letter to the organization’s members following her resignation, she stated: “It has been a pleasure to work for the [BHBA]. I have especially enjoyed getting to know all of you, whether through working together on projects like the Taste of Beacon Hill, the Holiday Stroll and the business directory, or by ratifying to see the results of what we’ve accomplished together. This is such a special business community, and it’s been gratifying to see the results of what we’ve accomplished together.”
Upon assuming her new role, Rooney has also vacated her position with the Republican State Committee for the second Suffolk District. She was first elected to the committee in 2004 during the presidential primary and was serving in her second term. During this time, Rooney recruited fellow Republicans to run for local and state elections and worked on many local campaigns.
As one of the city’s four election commissioners, Rooney will now help oversee all elections in the city.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said, “Ellen brings a strong and distinguished background in politics, and I am certain that she will provide an objective voice to the board.”
Rooney said she is taking on her new role at a special time, with the upcoming special election to fill the seat vacated by State Rep. Sal DiMasi in January.
And she believes her previous experience as chair of the city’s Licensing Board and executive director of the Boston-based Access Scholarship Program will give her an advantage in the new position.
“I’ll be working with the whole city, in every neighborhood,” she said. “I’m already familiar with all of Boston’s neighborhoods through my political experience and experience at City Hall.”

Let’s get out and clean …

This Saturday, residents from every neighborhood in Boston will be out sweeping, shoveling and bagging the last of winter’s remains. Street sweepers have been out since April 1, but there are still sand and old leaves on the streets, not to mention the fact that there are areas that the street sweepers cannot get, like in the parks and playgrounds.
We urge all residents to take part in any way that they can on Saturday.
A good cleaning makes the neighborhood shine. However, like any cleaning, this cannot happen just once a year. We urge all residents to continue the effort to keep their sidewalks clean. We realize that this continuing battle of keeping ahead of trash is easier said than done.
However, here are some ideas:
First, please move your car on the day of street sweeping. You could save a towing charge, but also make the cleaning job more effective.
Remember to bag all your trash securely. The single bag recycling should help, but make sure that you put all returnable bottles to the side so that the bottle pickers don’t tear through the bags.