[ This letter was prepared the morning of and presented to the Mayor and Department Heads at a meeting suddenly called in our neighborhood.  A verbal presentation was made at the same time. ]

Mayor and Department Heads
City Neighborhoods Meeting

My latest favorite analogy exemplifying the misdirection of most governmental and private intervention programs is that they are all trying to PUSH A ROPE UP A HILL.  One obvious example of this is the building in which we are now meeting.

Decision makers would rather use it to administer social welfare programs designed to ameliorate the negative effects associated with ignorance and poverty in declining neighborhoods than revert it to a 'neighborhood school' function which could also house the local youth oriented support groups tending to minimize such ignorance and poverty in the first place.  (Aren't there enough empty buildings along our local commercial strip, one and one-half blocks away, which could house the functions of the anti-poverty agency now controlling it!?)

2007 update: The building is a well built (in 1957) elementary school abandoned by the Catholic Church during its exodus from Inner Cities throughout our nation.  It was then being operated by the primary anti-poverty agency of the city, SDC.  By 1998, it reverted to its private elementary school status as the Marva Collins Preparatory School.  Around 2004, the school was completely remodeled and disassociated with Marva Collins over an unwillingness to continue implementing her higher standards regarding student expectations and self-discipline.

Another example is the willingness to spend public money promoting private enterprise start-ups in high crime neighborhoods rather than upon eliminating the criminality - the primary factor discouraging business success and start-ups.  (Doesn't anyone know enough about small business to realize that our local commercial strips, each not more than 1200 feet away from any residence, always were and still could be the most efficient 'small business incubators' one could devise?!)

Rather than continue ad infinitum with this negative discourse, the rest of this presentation details specific steps to take to convert declining neighborhoods monopolizing all our resources into decent self-perpetuating neighborhoods requiring more minimal (and normal) amounts of public tax support.  Government cannot continue pretending it's the "be all, do all, fix all" taking care of every conceivable problem coming down the pike.  Government must begin to share and relinquish that which it deems most precious - the decision making power regarding resource allocations which can begin to empower neighborhoods to develop and sustain their own more caring, timely and effective problem solving capabilities.

SUMMARY:  The idea is to create a temporary bureaucracy to serve as liaison between numerous governmental agencies and neighborhood groups to help focus upon and begin resolving legitimate problems identified at the neighborhood block level.

CENTRALIZED ADMINISTRATION for NEIGHBORHOODS DESIRING OFFICIAL SUPPORT (CAN DOs):  With a projected life of ten years, this office will coordinate and facilitate the creation and maintenance of decent self-supporting neighborhood groups, from as large as IRS 501(c)(3) not-for-profits to as small as Block Clubs.  It will identify and pass along to appropriate governmental entities the identification of families, homes and/or properties needful of coordinated, intensive intervention - as they are discovered by legitimated neighborhood groups.  Conversely, it can also coordinate routine government interventions (street repairs, house board-ups/tear-downs, etc.) so as to minimize disruptions emanating from same.

1.  To get started, CAN DO's should enlist volunteer help to take a block by block inventory of our city.  The Outstanding - Good - Average - Poor - Terrible condition of each of the following should be noted: litter, public infrastructure, private dwellings, detached non-residential structures and, lastly, both public and private landscaping.

2.  This base line inventory should be reflected by a color coded map detailing each and every block in Milwaukee.  The map will serve as our dynamic representation of progress - whether good or bad.  It will also quickly identify areas where energies can be most effectively focused.

3.  After the inventory is taken and there are identified islands of decency within highly dysfunctional neighborhoods, interviews should be conducted to identify the people and/or procedures sustaining such decency.

4.  Simultaneous with the above, CAN DO's should identify individual and organizational resources already involved in local interventions.

5.  Lastly, resources can be matched to needs, priorities established and the following interventions begun.  (The ongoing, often fruitless method of citizen to official communication will still prevail until neighbors become more organized and discover that concerted action through CAN DO's results in more effective problem resolution.)

INTERVENTIONS

A.  COMMUNICATIONS: Most, if not all of our ongoing problems stem from a breakdown in normal communication networks among neighbors, bureaucrats and politicians.  Regardless of the various and numerous distinct causes for this breakdown, we must reinstill mutually respectful communication networks within neighborhoods before they are ever going to become self-sustaining.  A few ways this can be done are:

- Block Clubs/Watches, athletic teams, scout troops and anything else which encourages children and adults to identify with and trust each other enough to trade telephone numbers.  (Aside from the positive feelings of self-worth and identity derived by kids when they are identified by name, the availability of telephone numbers to call concerned parents becomes a very powerful tool in minimizing disruptive behavior by neighborhood children.  Of course, then, as in the past, the focus will revert to the disruptive behavior by unknown children transiting through one's neighborhood!)

- Inexpensive dinner functions which allow parents to come as you are with children within walking distance of one's home.  Local schools and other buildings already having functioning cafeteria facilities would be best suited to this process.  Although the importance of a popular "speaker", "movie" or other attraction to encourage attendance cannot be over-emphasized, the most important aspect is to simply get neighborhood adults and children together to enhance mutual identification, awareness, respect and eventual self-sustaining problem solving cohesion.

- Public and/or privately subsidized trips to the Museum, Zoo, lakeshore, horseback riding, etc., chaperoned by neighborhood parents and nascently adult teens.

B.  COORDINATED, INTENSIVELY FOCUSED INTERVENTION: Abusive people seem to be so in almost every aspect of their lives.  They are self-identifying themselves by the way they treat or ignore their children and their homes.  While my gut feeling is that most can be helped merely by becoming more involved with neighbors and other local support groups, some require outside intervention.  

C.  CODE/LAW ENFORCEMENT: When all else fails or when there are identified those VERY FEW families who are actually physically destroying neighborhoods, the full weight of the government must be brought to bear to encourage them to change their ways.

As an example of this last case, I have presented each of you with a piece of roofing shingle.  Last month, it was in place where it belongs on the roof of a garage across the alley from my home.

[ 3/23/2001 update:  The garage roof is shown in the middle of the three pictures to the right.  Those pictures were taken in September of 1993.  Eventually, that garage was burned to the ground.  Click any of those pictures to go to a page with more pictures of that property.]

Sincerely,

Attachment: Piece of roofing shingle from the garage across the alley found in my yard within the past 10 days.  (It had been torn-off and thrown, frisbee style, by the half-dozen kids residing thereat, along with another half-dozen from surrounding houses joining in on the fun!  Needless to say, the local police repeatedly said they could do nothing unless they witnessed the activity themselves.  Several years later, when similar activity was actually witnessed by police, their 'excuse for inaction' was that they weren't called to the neighbhorhood for that! )

11/11/02 update:  Part of the police academy training appears to be how to "blow-off" citizens with one excuse after another explaining why nothing can be done about ongoing problems - presumably any problems that are not on the police department's 'priority' list(s).
|benigNeglect|home

Website link/location/URL: http://Ruben.Ciriacks.com/cando.htm