The group's new T-shirt (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
Freret Neighbors United members reaffirmed their support of a plan to make input from neighborhood groups a more formal part of city government in a wide-ranging meeting Tuesday that also included: plans for reducing blight, uniting the Milan area, founding a health clinic, enhancing street lighting, planting more trees and throwing a Halloween Party for neighborhood children.
Though the city’s proposed Citizen Participation Plan has been nearing its final form, several new concerns have arisen that threaten its adoption, Treasurer Jane Dimitry told the group of nearly 40 Freret and Milan residents gathered in the cafeteria Tuesday evening at Samuel J. Green Charter School. In the works for years but given a heightened urgency after Hurricane Katrina, the plan is intended to give neighborhood groups more voice in the city’s decisions and is modeled after successful programs in Portland and Birmingham — with one major exception, Dimitry said.
“Sometimes the neighborhood represents its people very well, but in other cases, people felt closer to their church, the AARP, or other organizations,” Dimitry said of post-Katrina New Orleans. “We wanted to find ways to get other organizations plugged into the model … That’s what’s unique about this one.”
The plan, however, has recently seen some setbacks, Dimitry said. It calls for neighborhood organizations to suspend mandatory dues requirements in exchange for an allocation of money from the city, which Dimitry said has been a source of concern in neighborhoods that use the dues (rather than taxes or fees) to pay for security patrols. The plan would also create official councils based on city planning districts to divide up the city’s hundreds of individual groups – a move that the Garden District Association recently criticized as needlessly creating “more layers of bureaucracy” in city government.
Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson has also suggested that the community input plan be written anew by the city’s planning commission, another recent development that Dimitry said has her concerned.
“What’s happened traditionally in the city is that some groups had good inroads to CPC, but other groups have not felt like they did,” Dimitry said.
Very few questions were asked of Dimitry after her presentation. Neighbors United President Dean Gancarz-Davies asked for a show of hands to support a letter to the city supporting the plan, and the majority of the people in the room slowly raised theirs, with none opposed.
(Update, 4 p.m. Wednesday: The Lens has new details on Clarkson’s desire to start the project over.)
Organizing Milan and fighting blight | The Milan neighborhood – between the Freret business corridor, the Garden District and Central City – is beginning to slip, and residents are losing connections with their neighbors, said Eva Sohl of the Freret Neighborhood Center. In hopes of turning that trend around, Sohl said a group of Milan residents are beginning to get organized to fight encroaching crime.
Sohl passed out New Orleans Police Department “hot sheets,” which let citizens report high-crime spots in their neighborhood for investigation, to the group of Milan residents in attendance. The new Milan neighborhood group will meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Atkinson-Stern Tennis Court to compile the sheets and further organize, and then present the sheets at the NOPD Second District community meeting at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at Touro Hospital.
Sohl also described her group’s continuing efforts to reduce the number of blighted properties in the Freret and Milan neighborhoods, reminding association members that the number of blighted properties had fallen from nearly 500 two years ago to 232 in a survey this summer. Of those, code enforcement has already dealt with about 50, leaving about 180 that the center is actively trying to contact.
The first step, Sohl said, will be a mailing to all those property owners, a project estimated to cost $115. Group members donated money toward the costs at the meeting, and Gancarz-Davies proposed donating $100 from Neighbors United toward the project. A meeting about the property campaign will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2, at the Freret Neighborhood Center.
Kimberly VanWagner, also of the Freret Neighborhood Center, said the time has come to reconsider the center’s long-range mission. While various individuals and foundations have been generous in their donations to the center so far, VanWagner said it’s now time to “see if the center is still useful and relevant,” and consider its long-term plan. A meeting to that effect will be held at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 11 at the center.
A new health clinic and new streetlights | Dimitry has also been participating in a working group on a project originally called the Broadmoor clinic that has since expanded its scope to include Freret, the Hoffman Triangle, Gert Town and Zion City neighborhoods. The clinic would tentatively be located in an old drug store at the corner of Washington Avenue and Broad Street, and would have late-night and weekend hours to be a “medical home” for neighborhood residents before they go to an emergency room.
That working group is trying to assemble a formal board for the clinic, Dimitry said, and invited anyone interested to join.
Meanwhile, a group striving to increase street lighting in the Freret and Milan neighborhoods is also continuing its work, said Neighbors United Vice President Andrew Amacker. What the city originally planned as a $2 million post-Katrina project to enhance the entire area has apparently been reduced in price and scope to only the Freret business corridor, Amacker said, so his group is putting together a pilot project and looking for private partners to test the street-lighting concept on about four blocks around the city.
First, they will do their best to encourage individual homes to be more diligent in leaving on porch lights at night, Amacker said. Second, the group is striving to replace the city’s old yellow light design (“which is great for horror movies, but not for walking around,” Amacker said) with new lights that brighten the street more effectively and last 15 to 20 years, reducing the need for replacing them. Finally, with the help of Tulane graduate students, they will seek out any remaining dark spots in the neighborhood and request the city install new lights there.
If the test blocks show marked quality-of-life improvements with the additional light at night, the group will pitch a larger project to the city, Amacker said. The first block has already been selected on the business corridor, and they are looking to identify three more blocks in very different areas around the city. The group’s next meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 9.
Tree planting and Halloween | Two other service projects are planned for the Freret area in the next few weeks. The fourth annual Halloween Party, which gives hundreds of neighborhood children free costumes and a safe environment for trick-or-treating, will be held at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 28, said David Bates of the Freret Neighborhood Center. To make it happen, however, the center needs donations of old costumes for the children.
“I want to make sure every youth involved gets a costume and as much candy as they can,” Bates said.
Finally, the November service project for Neighbors United will be a tree planting at the cemetery at Soniat and Loyola, said Patrick Kadow, who is organizing the effort. Parkway Partners, a nonprofit dedicated to beautifying New Orleans, has donated a dozen trees already and more may be available enough volunteers commit, Kadow said, noting that he’s also looking for an auger to speed the process of planting the trees.
Volunteers should assemble at 9 a.m. Nov. 13 at the cemetery, rain or shine, Kadow said.
What a really encouraging and detailed report of grass roots efforts by residents of a largely transition part of Uptown. It is so encouraging to see people fighting hard and creatively to make our neighborhood a better place. VERY exciting.