CRA Neighborhood Meeting - NET Program 6/26/13

This is a video of most of the meeting held last Wednesday night at the Shuffleboard Board Court building, put on by CRA staff Chris Dabros - Project Manager, Emily Theodossakos - Project Coordinator and CRA Board Member Oswaldo Ona. It was fairly well attended as these meetings go, with about 25 -30 in attendance throughout the meeting and discussion. There was a substantial representation from PBSO, but no one from Lake Worth city staff. Most conspicuously absent was any representation from Code Enforcement. Commissioner Andy Amoroso attended the meeting and ended up fielding the bulk of questions and comments from those in attendance. The focus of the meeting was forming a Neighborhood Enhancement Team (NET) for the area west of Dixie Hwy. and from 7th Avenue North to 7th Avenue South, east of I-95 as a way to further improve the area and address some chronic problems.

Editor's note: It is probably better to listen to this video than to watch it, since I kept the camera on those that were at the head table rather than turning to get the many responses, comments and questions from those in attendance. The first part is a PowerPoint presentation prepared by the staff that didn't come out too well on the video. But, the content of the discussion should really be the focus here and for the most part that came through loud and clear. I got all that I could given the life of the battery in the camera. I probably only missed the last few minutes. 

This comes in the wake of the CRA's successful $23 million NSP2 grant program that improved dilapidated structures in this general area, built some new homes and the artist loft project. The program also brought a lot of homeowners to the area and housed them in these rehabilitated structures. Some of these residents attended this meeting.

We heard recurring themes of problem properties and absentee landlords, challenges in communicating to a diverse community which uses languages other than English, social norms present in other cultures that are different than our own, the importance of children in the communication link to the parents, clean-up efforts and how to encourage participation in those. Some suggested grant monies to fund the clean-ups, others thought of a social "block party" where food is provided as a means of promoting community improvements.

There was frustration expressed at the large scope of some of the problems and the city's apparent inability to solve them - and the bureaucracy and laws that impede enforcement and compliance with codes. Caution was expressed about use of pronouns such as "them" and "those people" as we really are talking about the quality of living conditions in a geographic area of the city rather than something intrinsic to the populations that live in this area. And, again, one of the main themes is the challenge of bridging the communication gap between the city and its residents and the manifold problems inherent in that effort.