Neighborhood Groups Clash Over Boston Park

"They plant flowers, pick up trash, hold bake sales. In all of civic life, there may be few images more harmonious than those of the volunteers who look after neighborhood parks. Not so in Allston these days.

At Stanley A. Ringer Park, two volunteer groups -- Ringer Park Partnership Group and the new Friends of Ringer Park -- have now emerged from a recent history of rancor and power-grabs.

In a word, the groups hate each other. Their leaders have exchanged insults in the letters section of a neighborhood newspaper. Meetings at a local community center have been carefully scheduled to avoid confrontations, and the park's annual spring cleanup this year will be two separate efforts. The conflict, simmering since 2004, entered a new phase last month when one leader spread word that an opponent of the group was a Level 2 sex offender."

"'We know if we have another meeting, we will have a war there,' said Juan Gonzalez, community organizing director for the ABCDC [Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation]. 'For the sake of the neighborhood we said, "No more."'"