My wife and I along with several our our neighbors made the short trip down to the Lodge of the Great Northwest to attend the monthly Great Northwest Watch meeting. And tonight, it was more of a free for all, dig in and eat some vittles type of meeting. We had brisket, burgers, dogs and a multitude of side dishes including my wife's famous chili and numerous desserts.
Are you seeing a pattern here? I can't even do volunteer work unless it has some sort of connection to food! I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the "before" on this brisket. My wife talks about meat that can stand on its own without a sauce, and Richard's Brisket passed the test with flying colors - Tasty Treats all around!
We had about 40 folks including several of our newest Block Captains show up for the event. In addition to good food, we had Mr. Sean Fitzgibbons from District 6 Councilwoman Delicia Herrera's office and Officer Danny Robles, our SAFFE Officer field questions from the audience.
Of specific note was a series of questions one resident had regarding reduction in Section 8 payments the city is paying to landlords. The same resident had some other issues regarding water bills and CPS issues. I appreciated the way Mr. Fitzgibbons was able to immediately accept the complaints, offer his card and put her in touch with the appropriate person in his office to deals with those issues. People, this is why we have representatives, so we can get answers. Kudos to our District 6 staff.
Officer Robles fielded several questions from tagging to drug concerns and all matter in between. He talked to us about the Cellular on Patrol program and how we can put together a group of residents to have a class (you need to be certified to get the secret handshakes and such). I'm going to begin putting together an interest list of people that would be willing to take the course. If we can get 15 people, we can do it. In fact, I'm going to contact some folks from neighboring associations and see if they would like to form a joint class. Wanna be in the next COP class? E-mail me and tell me if you would rather do it in an evening (say 6pm to 9pm) or on a Saturday (maybe 9am to noon). You do not need to be a resident of The GNW or a member of the GNWatch to do this. We just want to make the class worth the officer's time.
We talked briefly about the National Night Out and what a great deal that is. If you were eagerly anticipating the heat of August for the next NNO, hang tight. It will now be in October (we think October 7th - more on that soon). If you want a good way to meet your neighbors, do like we do: Set up a table out front with a pot of chili, some hot dogs, a cooler full of refreshments and a yard full of lawn chairs. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to have fun! Our coordinator, Ms. Betty Hood is already working on obtaining door prizes. More to follow on this.
I was very pleased to have most of our members of the GNWCIA Board of Directors present. These people put in a lot of hours of their own time and it was super awesome to have them come as members of the GNWatch and meet and mingle with our Block Captains. We appreciate the hard work you do for the association.
Finally, I'm going to approach the Board concerning maybe changing the meeting times to begin earlier - even 6:30PM or 7PM (we normally start at 7:30PM). Tell me what you think about it. Would you come to the meetings if you thought we could get in by 6:30 and be out the door by 7:45 or 8PM? If this was your first meeting, I should tell you that we usually are a bit more structured. I walked in the door tonight with no agenda at all and literally shot from the hip the entire evening, fitting in the speakers as they arrived and such. My guess is that many people do not want to attend a meeting that drags on and on (like my blog posts). So please, tell me what you think.
Most of you won't give a hoot about any of this, but since I use this blog to tell you about the place I live, mi barrio as they say, hopefully some neighbors will find the information, uh, informative.
My wife and I joined a handful of residents at a meeting of the Great Northwest Watch Wednesday evening – the first one for 2008. We had an informative meeting and I’d like to take a minute to tell you about it. The meeting did get off to a late start because the Lodge was being used as a place to take pictures of various sports teams, but it wasn’t a real issue. Chief Burton of GNW Security had arranged for two of our SAFFE officers, Officers Atkinson and Struxness, to provide the group with some home security tips and a way for homeowners to get a 5 percent discount on insurance. They offer a free service where they will come out to your house, do a thorough inspection of the place, then send a form into the state insurance board. Regardless of your insurance company, if you meet the requirements, state law mandates that you get the 5%. They offered up a handful of tips about different easy and inexpensive ways of securing your doors and the difference between what works and what doesn’t work. As they pointed out – they can't guarantee that nobody will try to burglarize your house, but you can make your house a less attractive target with easy and inexpensive methods, and simply send the crooks on to your neighbor’s house to do the stealing. Gee, I hope your neighbor has some insurance!
They also gave out a few interesting tidbits - did you know that not all burglars are male? Yep, the percentage of female criminals is rising fast. Your burglar will not always be dressed in black or look like that character from the McDonald's commercials. They are going to try to blend in to the surroundings. But the stats show that they still tend to be young, and they tend to be nervous. So if some young nervous girl is hanging out by the side of your house, it may not be because she is waiting for your son to get home, she could be there to rip you off.
One other thing that I have mentioned here before, and that has to do with the City of San Antonio and our SAPD. We have a force of about 2,000 officers (with 400-600 eligible to retire this month), to cover our entire city. The city of Philadelphia which is roughly the same population as San Antonio has 6,000 officers. Last year, our city fielded over 1 million 9-11 calls. If you dial 9-1-1 to have a police officer come figure out who knocked over your garbage can, what are the chances they are going to get to you anytime this week?
Sadly, the same thing is true for my pet peeve, graffiti. Please do not dial 9-1-1 to report graffiti. Call the non-emergency number 207-SAPD (7273) or 207-7484 and report it there. If you are giving a description of a suspect, describe the person from either head to toe, or toe to head. Men: they do not need to know how large Jennifer Broome's breasts have suddenly become. Give them something they can work with while they are looking for the scoundrels. And do me a favor, if you see them, take a picture of them (the graffiti artists) in the act. That might help.
Before the officers skedaddled off, they also mentioned something you might want to do. Get your camera and make a video of all the contents in your house, and do up an inventory of everything and take it to another location. This way, if you get ripped off, you have a list for the insurance company with pictures. Also, do a back-up of your computer. They mentioned people who had laptops stolen and had huge business set-backs because all of their contact information, calendars and work was on the laptop. Good advice.
Up next, Mr. Mike Yager from the GNW A-Team gave a few quick words on how he is trying to revamp the group of area volunteers. His comments were well received and my wife and I even piped up to give testimonials of what a great time we had working with a group a few weeks ago.
Mike hit on one area that I’d like to mention and that is that some people may have a firmer line of what they consider helping out the community and doing personal services for people who should be paying for it. For example I think we can all agree that a group of people volunteering to help clean-up a community park is an effort that the community as a whole benefits from and whether or not you have kids who play in that park, it is still for the betterment of the community. Mike and a few others (myself included), can see trying to help an older couple, disabled person, or perhaps a young mother who has a spouse deployed with lots of little kids around the house who might need assistance with some yard work or something. Some people feel that this crosses the line because suddenly, now one person is upset that volunteers mowed his neighbor's yard, but not his.
My view is, first and foremost, this is a volunteer effort. If you don;t want to support a particular project, simply don't. Nobody is going to hold it against you. Mike has taken it a step further (hence, the reason he is in charge). He says that tough evaluations and decisions will have to be made, and some people may be unhappy that the A-Team could not support their need. But we can't allow that disappointment to halt the good that the group can do as a whole.
So, if you think you have even an hour to give only one time, not even on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, but just one time, please contact Mike. You can get a form for the A-Team and Mike's contact info from the February Passages (online now).
Okay, following the A-Team discussion, it was my big debut as the new coordinator for the watch. I'm happy to report that I did not faint from nervousness, though my wife says that I constantly clicked my pen. Perhaps next time, I take one of those little squeeze balls.
I wanted to ask my fellow watch captains (it sounds almost Tony Soprano-like) how they felt about a few things about how the format of the meetings go and just stuff that was administrative in nature. One thing for sure was that everyone agreed we should make the meetings as quick as possible - they start at 7:30PM, and we should definitely be done and on our way home by 9PM. And, the assembled crowd agreed that we should only have guest speakers if they were on topic. If not, why bring someone in just for the sake of speaking?
If you are reading this and you live in the GNW and you are, or you want to be, a block captain, please get in touch with me via e-mail by clicking here. I will try to contact the folks I have contact info for. Also, you don't have to be a block captain to attend the meetings. The next one is Wednesday, February 27 2008 and we will have a speaker from the San Antonio Parks Department to talk about - what else - Oscar Perez Memorial Park.
I joined GNW Board Director Richard Garcia Saturday morning for a little surveying of the hood, and some clean up of the Emerald Valley Park. We did some graffiti clean-up and a lot more trash pick-up over a short few hours, and I just wanted to leave you with a few comments.
When I was a kid, it was drilled into my head about the obscenity of littering. I can tell you that to this day, the sight of somebody tossing trash out the window of a car or leaving a public place in disarray leaves me quite pissed. Graffiti simply elevates that disgust because it is no longer an act of poor manners, but in fact a criminal act.
I'm at a loss as to why we treat this crime as a simple nuisance rather than a crime punishable by 10 whacks with a cane in a public square. In fairness, I have been known to condone the use of water boarding as a means for extracting information from GITMO residents, so I probably don't qualify as an arbiter of reasonable punishment for unruly teenagers.
I don't think that the trash problem is a result of bad kids, I think it is more likely, bad parents. The fact is, we only spent about ten minutes dealing with the graffiti. We easily spent another hour or so picking up plastic bottles, napkins, cups and other assorted items, most often within tossing distance of garbage cans.
In other words, people have an easy choice of placing an empty bottle in a garbage can without having to lift a lid even, or placing the empty bottle on the ground less than a foot or two away from the can. They choose the ground.
This is a failure of parents. It is also a failure of the community.
I don't have some long list of what we need to do as a community to fix this problem, but I know that we could start by using the resources we have already paid for. I don't want to make anyone's job harder, but shouldn't our maintenance staff be at least emptying the garbage cans at the parks before the start of the weekend? Aside from the trash that was tossed all over the ground, a few park visitors at least attempted to do the right thing by using the trash cans - several were full beyond capacity.
If this isn't part of the job description for maintenance, how hard would it be to create a handful of part time positions for either some of our senior citizens or some high school aged kids who would spend a few hours a week doing the simple task of picking up the discarded trash left by obnoxious, ill-mannered park patrons (you know - your neighbors), and being certain the garbage cans are empty so those people who want to do the right thing can use them.
Director Garcia mentioned to me that if a group like The A-Team were to do what he and I did over a few hours, it could be knocked out in about 15 minutes. What a great idea.
I don't want to take the burden off of the maintenance department, but this is our community and for the number of residents, we should be able to put together a mob of volunteers for something so simple.
Like many residents, I work full time and can't tell you I can give up 20 hours a week to go pick up some unruly kid's trash or paint over the foul graffiti of some criminal who has no respect for the community he lives in, but 15 to 30 minutes once or twice a month?
I drive by the soccer fields on weekends and I see hundreds of people enjoying our great facilities. What if immediately following a soccer game, the kids and families of two teams hit one of the parks for a 20 minute clean-up? Simply making sure empty soda bottles were in the cans, discarded candy wrappers were picked up and yes, even soiled Pampers were properly disposed of. Parents, there has to be some reason you are enrolling your kids in soccer - surely it has to do with sportsmanship and being part of a team, right? Why not take a few minutes and also teach them to be good citizens? This doesn't have to be an every weekend thing. With the number of soccer teams we have, it could be rotated so each team does it once or twice a season.
I'd love to hear your ideas on how to keep the place clean. I'd also like to hear what you think about the worsening graffiti problem. I tried to submit a suggestion to the board for the budget process, but not quite sure they received the e-mail form I submitted it on. So I'll tell you about it here.
I propose that the board purchase some surveillance camera equipment that would be owned by the association but provided to residents on an temporary basis. I think of these people whose homes line Timber Path Road who are constantly the victims of graffiti. A resident would contact Chief Burton and his security staff to arrange for the loan of the equipment. The security staff could then assist the resident in installing a camera on the resident's property. After the vandals do their deed, the resident could contact SAPD and turn over the evidence to them, and the equipment would be returned to security. Yes, yes, yes, I know - we better consult the lawyers or we could be liable for something. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. ((Please forgive that outburst, it was directed toward the people who can't wipe their nose without first seeing if it is in the By Laws or if the association lawyer thinks it prudent.))
I don't expect this idea to end world hunger, but I think it is a step in the right direction toward identifying these little bastards and taking some action toward letting their parents know what their precious little Rembrandt's are up to on Friday nights.
A second suggestion I have is to provide the security staff with a digital camera. I believe that every incident of graffiti should be photographed and cataloged by date and location of the crime. I'm next expecting Chief Burton and his staff to be Jim Rockford or Magnum PI, but how hard is it to snap a picture and record the location and date. The point of this catalog is to attempt to allow the SAPD to make a connection to other crimes the vandals of done when the catch someone via the surveillance cameras mention above.
I fully understand that handing the district attorney a bunch of pictures of graffiti is not going to send these little punks off to Huntsville, but I suspect that a SAFFE Officer showing up at the home and presenting the information to parents might help get their attention.
Aside from busting out shotguns and patrolling the streets (which I oppose) what suggestions do you have as to how to deal with this situation? Tell me about.
Are you seeing a pattern here? I can't even do volunteer work unless it has some sort of connection to food! I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the "before" on this brisket. My wife talks about meat that can stand on its own without a sauce, and Richard's Brisket passed the test with flying colors - Tasty Treats all around!
We had about 40 folks including several of our newest Block Captains show up for the event. In addition to good food, we had Mr. Sean Fitzgibbons from District 6 Councilwoman Delicia Herrera's office and Officer Danny Robles, our SAFFE Officer field questions from the audience.
Of specific note was a series of questions one resident had regarding reduction in Section 8 payments the city is paying to landlords. The same resident had some other issues regarding water bills and CPS issues. I appreciated the way Mr. Fitzgibbons was able to immediately accept the complaints, offer his card and put her in touch with the appropriate person in his office to deals with those issues. People, this is why we have representatives, so we can get answers. Kudos to our District 6 staff.
Officer Robles fielded several questions from tagging to drug concerns and all matter in between. He talked to us about the Cellular on Patrol program and how we can put together a group of residents to have a class (you need to be certified to get the secret handshakes and such). I'm going to begin putting together an interest list of people that would be willing to take the course. If we can get 15 people, we can do it. In fact, I'm going to contact some folks from neighboring associations and see if they would like to form a joint class. Wanna be in the next COP class? E-mail me and tell me if you would rather do it in an evening (say 6pm to 9pm) or on a Saturday (maybe 9am to noon). You do not need to be a resident of The GNW or a member of the GNWatch to do this. We just want to make the class worth the officer's time.
We talked briefly about the National Night Out and what a great deal that is. If you were eagerly anticipating the heat of August for the next NNO, hang tight. It will now be in October (we think October 7th - more on that soon). If you want a good way to meet your neighbors, do like we do: Set up a table out front with a pot of chili, some hot dogs, a cooler full of refreshments and a yard full of lawn chairs. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to have fun! Our coordinator, Ms. Betty Hood is already working on obtaining door prizes. More to follow on this.
I was very pleased to have most of our members of the GNWCIA Board of Directors present. These people put in a lot of hours of their own time and it was super awesome to have them come as members of the GNWatch and meet and mingle with our Block Captains. We appreciate the hard work you do for the association.
Finally, I'm going to approach the Board concerning maybe changing the meeting times to begin earlier - even 6:30PM or 7PM (we normally start at 7:30PM). Tell me what you think about it. Would you come to the meetings if you thought we could get in by 6:30 and be out the door by 7:45 or 8PM? If this was your first meeting, I should tell you that we usually are a bit more structured. I walked in the door tonight with no agenda at all and literally shot from the hip the entire evening, fitting in the speakers as they arrived and such. My guess is that many people do not want to attend a meeting that drags on and on (like my blog posts). So please, tell me what you think.
