This is Ms Barbara Latta, one of my fellow neighborhood activists from the Aspen Hill neighborhood. She lived for a long time in the Fairways Community, where there has been an ongoing set of problems, problems she has worked to resolve for many long years. I feel privileged to be working with her for the betterment of the community.
In the image above, she's addressing a little get-together back in 2006, when then-governor Bob Ehrlich was rolling out the new and improved SOCEM program which tracks convicted sexual offenders. Ms Latta's presentation was, among other things, thanking the Governor for the many contributions to the so-called "Mid-County Neighborhood Initiative/CSAFE" program.
"CSAFE" originated under the auspices of former Lt Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend as the "Hot Spots" program. They identified areas which had not merely high levels of street crime, but also high levels of such crimes as spouse abuse, school truancies, and a high dropout rate from school. The idea was, if you can apply a wide range of programs from increased funding for law-enforcement -- especially "community based policing" -- along with gang-prevention and drug-prevention efforts in the schools and youth community, with a focus on prevention rather than dealing with existing problems, several years down the road you would see disproportional improvements in community well-being and crime reduction as well.
Under Governor Ehrlich, the focus shifted more to law-enforcement, hiring and training more officers, but particularly the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention dedicated extra funding to "collaborative supervision and focused enforcement" ("CSAFE") to prevent recidivism, funding overtime hours for parole and probation officers, especially tasked with supervision of at-rick offenders. Under Governor O'Malley, and faced with immense budgetary shortfalls, we are bit unsure about how the program may be funded in the future.
We in Aspen Hill and the surrounding communities benefited not only from this program, but from comparable funding from Montgomery County's programs for Children, Youth and Families. All of this was coordinated through the "Collaboration Council", an unfortunately named organization which coordinates grants from State and County to make sure there's no "double-dipping" or failure to fund needed programs. I have to extend my compliments to, among others, Rob Musser and Gabi Liquorie for their exceptional efforts, deep diligence, and year-after-year perseverance in getting us ongoing, if scant, funding.
The fact is, all of the above combined with a concerted effort of what you might call "in-kind contributions of good-will". Someone somewhere gave us the green-light, and MNCPPC worked with us. Parks Police worked with us. Recreation sort of worked with us. The County Schools provided meeting space, and we try to promote their after-school and summertime programs. Graffiti Abatement Partners (GRAB) works with us. Lots more people including too many very decent and concerned citizens work with us and above and beyond it all, we work with them, we work with each other.
We cleaned up -- and will continue to clean up -- North Gate Park. We got them a new basketball court, and volunteers from the Pre-Release Center, various students looking for community-service hours, exceptionally hard working and kind volunteers from Marriott Corporation, and many others as well, have contributed a great many hours to clean up trash and clear out underbrush. People now use the soccer field, and mothers feel safe enough to bring their tiny babies and toddlers to use the new playground equipment. But we CAN do better... and we SHALL do better.
Communities coming together to combat their common problems can indeed engage local government to work with and work for each other, singly and as groups.
We've been doing it for years. And we'll keep doing it.
This is part of what your Community Services programs of the Montgomery County Department of Police are doing, along with a lot of other agencies.
This is a worthy project that leverages minimal cash investment -- all 12 Community Services Division units altogether cost a mere $675,000 for the year, and that includes much much more than just helping provide safety at one local park and the immediate surrounding neighborhood.
Community Services, as an evolving outreach program that quickly adapts to bring the community and the local-government agencies together to speedily solve problems, is something that (if elected) I would not cut.
It has benefited me, it has benefited Aspen Hill, it's probably benefiting your community.
Please support it!
You might also want to take a look at the AspenHillNet archive of Mid-County Neighborhood Initiative/CSAFE activities and publications.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment