City Councilor Calls for Active Neighborhood Group to Engage Community
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Councilor Rosen believes that neighborhood councils will promote civic engagement and participation in the city.
Twenty percent of the voters in the district will need to sign a petition to initiate the process of creating a District 5 neighborhood council.
The creation of neighborhood councils was added under Article Eight of the city charter in 1985.
“Most things have been looked at and instituted in the charter except Article Eight which has been talked about for 30 years - not implemented, not instituted,” Rosen said.
Article eight reads: “It is the purpose of this article to encourage citizen involvement in government at the neighborhood level by permitting limited self-government through the establishment of neighborhood area councils as legal entities of the city government. The city council may establish one or more neighborhood area councils to provide advisory and self-help functions that the neighborhood area council is authorized to undertake.”
“The idea is to engage our citizens. And I know a lot of my colleagues are going to stay our citizens are engaged enough. Well, it doesn’t show at the polls on election day,” said Rosen.
Councilor Rosen discussed projects with members of his district and they listed voter turnout growth, job growth, promotion of fine arts, tackling trafficking and parking issues, and “combating dumping and cleaning up their areas.”
City Councilor Rick Rushton responded to Councilor Rosen’s proposal and said that organizations in the city should be growing from the bottom-up, and not starting at a city council meeting. Rushton named groups that exist as neighborhood associations including groups at Coes Pond, Indian Lake, and Newton Hill and several neighborhood crime watch organizations.
“When people are invested in something that they want to advocate for, they will come together,” said Rushton.
Councilors Tony Economou and Phil Palmieri welcomed Councilor Rosen’s idea.
“Lord only knows that we need as much as help as we can in each and every district because there’s lot of issues, lots of problems, but lots of success happens as a result of all of the people participating,” Palmieri said.
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