Several blogs, mine included, have done posts on the conditions in Davenport. We have spouted crime facts, figures, percentages, and neighborhood needs. We've done it with pie-charts, graphs, tables, and pdfs. We have tried humor and outrage. But it seems like not that many solutions are coming back. We know some politicians read the blogs, so maybe if we come up with some good ideas they will use them. I don't include Chief Bladel or Malin in this part. I don't believe either is willing, or able, to listen to mere citizens. But I thought we'd give it a whirl again.
-First, why not make yard waste free. Year round.
-Then, why not make the city council smaller? Council members say more is better. Some claim more members equates to a better exchange of ideas. Yeah, right. This from a group who had to hire a babysitter to tell them how to play well together.
-Let's bring back the beat cop. It used to be everyone had one,and knew one; and the best part, the beat cop knew who was supposed to be in the area.
-Then why not slow down with the low income housing complexes. This isn't Chicago. I'd be willing to bet we could get by with a lot less. I believe JLCS has outgrown it's market. It needs to be stabalized and kept to a certain level of operation.
-Let's take our neighborhoods back. A lot of us don't want the "not for profits" around, or at least less visible. Instead of putting small overpriced ranch houses in our neighborhoods, rehab what is here.
-People need to get educated. If over 16% of our residents don't have a high school diploma, let's fix it. How? If someone gets arrested, and recieves probation; make it a condition of the probation that they get a GED before release.
-A lot of low income renters are not responsible for any damage they do to the properties they rent. If they break it, make THEM fix it. Not the landlord.
-Getting the criminals out. Make it a condition of their probation that can't live within the city limits until they're off probation. It can be done. Let's get rid of the high crime and poverty numbers.
-With downtown and other areas being called unsafe by some, let's bring back family fests, or block parties and show off what we've accomplished. Let's get people in these areas and prove they're not as bad as some people think.
That's some of my ideas; anybody else want to chime in? Like I tell my son, the worse that can happen is someone says no. But if we don't ask, we'll never know.
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8 comments:
1). Nothing is free. Users paying for their yardwaste is the most efficient way to pay.
2). Smaller council is fine as long as some at large representation is part of it. I would prefer the mayor be selected from the group of elected alderman each year (like the school board pick the president and VP).
3). Great idea but you can't raise taxes high enough to pay for beat cops.
4). Don't care one way or the other but the stats still show that there is not enough affordable, SAFE, CLEAN housing for Davenport.
5). Yes, but how do we convince higher income households and for-profit builders to come to SoLo and build? I agree with you, but this is an idea with no meat on the bone. I think Alderman Frink's neighborhood housing finance idea may be the best idea out there to jump start this.
6). Yes. This should be idea number 1.
7). Landlords can, and do, take large deposits to keep their properties up and have the ability to evict. It is a usiness relationship that government has no business dictating one way or the other. The landlord is the property owner and they need to keep their assets in good shape.
8). Where arew they supposed to live? If gettign a job is part of theri probation, how is that supposed to work? I think if you do number 6, this will be less of a problem.
9). Yes, there is a lot and more won't be a bad thing.
My ideas - mandatory counseling before marriage - Not only do many marriages end up in divorce, the number one thing that takes up the police department's time is domestic dispute calls.
After-school programs free of charge for middel school kids. The number one time of day for juvenile arrests is between 3-5 pm. Coincidence? I don't think so. Call it babysitting or whatever, I don't care it is one way to slow down the cycle and free up police resources.
Provide housing incentives for middle and upper middle income families who purchase and rehab property SoLo and give bonuses to those that convert rentals back to single-family homes. I think Frin's program should address this.
That's my shot. Who's next?
I don't know what you guys mean by "beat cops" because we currently have beats and cops that generally are assigned to the same ones.
Do you mean foot patrol?
anon at 12:09 I like the ideas. I don't have a tree with leaves in my yard, but I end up with at least 8 bags full of leaves every year. A lot of this stuff is just my ranting, and in no particular order. In an earlier post I mentioned several communites who had solutions for some of this. One had a local Police organization that helped people find housing in inner cities. There were other good ideas also. As for the landlord deal, if they take section 8, they are limited in what they can charge, and have to make repairs. As for number 8, I don't care where they go, Davenport used to do this. This whole idea is that while we move them out, they have to behave or go to jail. That makes them behave in their new city, and a few I know who got booted out in the 60's were model citizens when they come back. I like your other ideas also.
QCI, a beat cop was cop who had a few neighborhoods to patrol and did his shift there, or at a sub-station. I can be corrected, but if I remember right there used to a sub-station in the Col. Davenport house.
We probably couldn't afford them today, but they were a crime deterent in their day.
Okay - there may not be enough affordable safe housing - but what stats are you pointing to exactly? The solution is not to just build more new rentals. What our problem really is - is that we don't have enough decent renters to fill these complexes. We lack the appropriate tenants.
Tell JLCS and others to stop attracting poor people to Davenport so we can have a figthing chance to recover from the over abundance of dependent poor people already here.
Aside from the substation thing, cops still have "beats" that they're usually assigned to. You're correct that there used to be a substation in the LeClaire House, but I don't know what the house is being used for currently. The "beats" are fairly large, and police are usually too busy to just spend time meeting people. The cops know the people who they see on a near daily-basis very well, even by first names.
From the Police website:
The City for response purposes is divided into (2) two districts referred to as the East and West sides of Davenport. Each district is made up of (4) four patrol beats that are broken down into reporting areas to provide statistical data on criminal activities and community service needs. This statistical data is studied for manpower deployment to provide the best possible service to the community.
The post I'm talking about is toward the bottom called "anti crime programs". In it I list 7 or 8 programs that have worked in other cities, and has a link to a site that has several more. I don't know the solution for bad renters. If they're that bad maybe we don't want them anyway.
QCI, the beat cop of yesterday used to walk his beat. He would talk to neighbors and kids to learn what was going on. And the neighbors would get to know him. On bad days he might drive a cruiser, but usually he was on foot. These new "beats" are much larger, and the Police don't usually have time to stop and talk because of the number of calls they recieve.
Ask the actual officers QCI and they will tell you that they think there are too few police officers on the street at any given time. * to be exact to cover the entire city at any given time. This is a shame and your buddies at city hall are to blame.
Community policing citywide is the solution, but Bladel can't seem to get that realy well. NETS is a bandaid because it is isolated in certain areas which drives the criminals to other areas - some that were once safe.
I don't think I've ever said we have enough cops...
I know firsthand that we don't.
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