Neighborhoods are always faced with challenges as growth attracts more residents who are faced with a housing shortage. Residents are experiencing overoccupancy of students residing in single family homes, noise violations, parking problems and an overall decrease of quality of life. Some cities have a Neighborhood Enforcement program run by a member of the city staff who helps address these issues.
Although a Neighborhood Enforcement program was good in theory, in practice it wasn’t a comprehensive solution. So let me tell you about a solution that did work. It worked so well in fact that it’s been successfully replicated in other areas – specifically in commercial areas, but I think we can apply this same model to neighborhoods. Let me tell you why.
As a council member for eight years, I started attending meetings with the Merchants at First and Main, a town center I represented in Blacksburg, Virginia. I was successful in creating strong relationships with the merchants of First and Main as the liaison for the commercial center from the Town. Even before the new owner of First and Main came in, I made myself available and accessible to the merchants and advocated for them when they requested something from local government. The result was a positive experience between the Town and the First and Main community. The relationship was so successful that we increased our scope and I helped create the South Main Merchants Association – a stand-alone group that later became the model for the other merchants group in our other commercial centers.
My idea to improve neighborhood integrity is to translate that commercial center liaison model to our neighborhoods. Each council member would take on a district or a group of neighborhoods and make themselves available and accessible through the homeowner associations or active residents in the neighborhood. When a neighbor has an issue, concern or even compliment they want to make to the city, they know they have an advocate in an elected council member. We will discuss the neighborhoods with a council report at our end of month meetings or during our quarterly work sessions.
Having a council member as a neighborhood liaison will help the citizens who live in our neighborhoods be heard and will validate their concerns. We need to protect the residents who are choosing to live, raise families and invest in our community.
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