Summerville Park next for neighborhood enhancement
The 30-day cleanup will start in mid-May.
Summerville Park has been chosen for the first Neighborhood Enhancement Program focus this year.
Assistant City Manager Patrick Eidson said what has been a 90-day program is going to be condensed to a 30-day concentrated effort the city hopes to replicate on a more frequent basis.
Two previous 90-day NEP efforts have been conducted in North Rome. Eidson said the change to a 30-day condensed program was the brainchild of the Community Development Committee, chaired this year by Commissioner Bill Collins. “They wanted to see something different,” Eidson said.
“Ultimately our goal is to go in, highlight the
neighborhood that Summerville Park is, and hopefully generate some interest in other neighborhoods that will see the success we have over there and push forward with this in their own community,” Eidson said.
Collins, who lives in Summerville Park, said the neighborhood was chosen for the first condensed cleanup because of a strong neighborhood
association that has been in existence for many years. The committee expressed concern at their first meeting this year that the NEP had not been as successful at developing neighborhood coalitions in the specific service areas as they had hoped.
“This is all about building up strong communities all over our city,” Collins said. “We would like
other neighborhoods in our community to ask questions to Summerville Park residents to see how they have been able to sustain a strong sense of community and pride in their neighborhood.”
Plans for the Summerville Park focus are still being developed, but Eidson said he expects the cleanup to take place from mid-May to mid-June.
The focus will also feature stepped-up police presence, enhanced garbage pick-up and additional code enforcement. “All of those things we were doing in the original NEP, just over a shorter time frame,” Eidson said. “The big thing is that we want to push the message to take ownership of your own neighborhood.”