Why City Council Members Should Lead Their Wards' Neighborhood Watch Groups

City Council members have more to gain from the success of Neighborhood Watch than the rest of us. If they lead that neighborhood watch effort, that is. 

In my city of 11,000 people in 9 political wards, most people can't even name their city  council person but if that ward has a neighborhood watch the people of that ward get text messages and emails from their neighborhood watch coordinator every week. Over time, ward members may even think their neighborhood watch leader is their city council person. 

Here in my apathetic little town of St. Albans where city council seats have been won with as few as 4 votes, a popular and well-known neighborhood watch coordinator could easily unseat their city council member in the next election unless the city council member and the neighborhood watch coordinator are one in the same. 

Neighborhood watch people in my apathetic little town - I've called it an "apathariat" - are divided on the question of whether or not it's appropriate for city council members to lead their wards' neighborhood watch efforts but I say there's no surer way to win re-election or to position oneself for a mayoral run. If I were a city council member I would make sure I was the best known person in the ward.

Nobody has more to gain from a successful neighborhood watch than your city council member - if he or she is leading it. Leading the neighborhood watch is like having a license to stay in constant contact with people in the ward. A good neighborhood watch leader knocks on doors to recruit new members, sends emails and texts to members and makes old-fashioned phone calls to people in the ward. If our Citywide Neighborhood Watch Czaress, Shelly Douglass Ellis, keeps doing what she's doing she'll not only be better known than her ward's council member but she'll have more citywide name recognition than most city council members citywide when our next election year arrives. She'll be perfectly positioned to run for elected office.

Desper Lemon will be ward 7 councilman as long as he wants to be because he shrewdly seized and kept the spotlight, running the ward 7 neighborhood watch as if it's an official  part of his job description.

My own council member, Cheryl Thomas, can relax. First, she's already pretty well known  in our ward because Cheryl knocked on doors and worked to build a neighborhood watch before me. 

Second, I have written many times that Baby Boomers like me should not be running for city offices. I've consistently said that people with no real stake in the future should not be making decisions for those with a stake in the future. My apathetic little town of St. Albans needs to elect more twenty somethings, not more Boomers like me. I've been unswerving about that. When 28-year-old Jason Philabaun was elected to council in the 2nd ward I was full-throated about our apathariat's need more council members from his generation. I believe this to my core. Cheryl Thomas knows I won't run for council but whoever becomes neighborhood watch coordinator after me may not make such a promise.

But other city council members have something to lose if they don't lead the neighborhood watch effort in their wards. Council members who have not anointed themselves both council member and neighborhood watch coordinator could easily lose the next election to neighborhood watch coordinators who get out and knock on doors, make phone calls, send emails and texts and become the best known members of their wards. 

Robert Keiffer, Ron Colby, Loretta Griffith and Kevin Pennington, I'm talking to you. I think neighborhood watch coordinator, John Kidd , could beat Loretta Griffith  in the 6th ward right now. 

Nobody has more to gain from a successful neighborhood watch than a city council person - but only if that council person is leading it.
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Higginbotham At Large reads all comments from readers but I only PUBLISH the comments of well-identified submitters. There will be no Ring of Gyges for you.

Why Your St. Albans Neighborhood Watch Groups Are Hosting Speakers, Block Parties and Other Social Events

A few weeks ago I gave voice to what John and Wilma Kidd, Cheryl Thomas, Shelly Ellis and some of the other neighborhood watch people already knew when I said, "Before we can protect a neighborhood with a neighborhood watch we have to first restore that lost sense of neighborhood." The things that once united us now divide us. Take the once common "neighborhood church". Sunday used to be the day you worshipped with people you already saw all week long because you lived in the same neighborhood. No, you don't know where I'm going with this. I am not going to laud these neighborhood churches nor am I going to decry their disappearance. I'm going to explain how their disappearance has contributed to our citywide loss of the sense of "neighborhood" and "community" we once had.

But first I have to explain what I mean by the disappearance of the neighborhood church because some of my readers will say that they still exist. If by "exist" you mean that such former neighborhood churches as Highlawn Presbyterian, Highlawn Baptist and First Christian still exist, yes, they still exist on paper. And their edifices are still there. But they aren't neighborhood churches anymore. 

Neighborhood churches are churches built to interact with the people who lived within walking distance. This goes back to a time when many families had only one car or no car at all so they walked to church. These neighborhood churches are land=locked, that is, they are closely bordered by residences on all sides and there's nowhere for them to enlarge parking. Some neighborhood churches never had a parking lot because they didn't need one and didn't foresee a time that they would. So, the people who attended these neighborhood churches all lived in the same neighborhood and their common church unified them and gave them a sense of community. 

Many former neighborhood churches are simply closed now, their membership too old and too and too few in numbers to support a pastor and an edifice.

Those that remain aren't neighborhood churches anymore because, as people became more mobile and more independent and could get in their cars and drive to any church they wish, people are now attending churches where they don't live, not churches where they live. In some cases, people actually choose to attend churches outside their own neighborhoods as a way of protecting their privacy from the neighbors. I call this phenomenon "Casual Anonymous Church Among Consenting Adults".There are few secrets for a family that attends church where most of the people in the pews are also neighbors. 

And the neighborhood churches decline and die because they can't "compete" with the almost-mega-churches like Maranatha or Bible Center. This is called the "feeder-receptor phenomenon because the larger churches grow at the expense of the smaller churches.

Some of these former neighborhood churches avoided decline and closure by buying surrounding properties to make parking. One such former neighborhood church that bought itself time and opportunity by buying its neighboring houses is Highlawn Baptist. But while that familiar old neighborhood edifice is still there, Highlawn Baptist isn't a neighborhood church anymore. Highlawn Baptist is now more of a citywide or even regional church because it now has enough parking to accommodate an independent, mobile churchgoer wherever he is.

If you were to go to any of the churches I've mentioned here, you would find that relatively few of their attendees live in the neighborhood. People in the same pew are strangers to each other and won't see or think about each other until next Sunday. 

Similarly, neighborhood schools are gone. When my family moved to St. Albans in 1962 I lived close enough to Parkway Elementary, Highlawn Elementary and Belvil Elementary that attending any of them would have been OK with my parents and I. I was assigned to Belvil. It doesn't exist now. It's part of the high school. Highlawn Elementary is a "sports complex". Parkway Elementary has been torn down and is now a parking lot for a nearby church and a nearby flea market. The newer Alban Elementary now serves as the elementary school for practically the whole east half of St. Albans and most of the kids aren't neighbors to each other which means most of the parents aren't neighbors, either, so, once again, one source of community building - the neighborhood elementary school - is gone.

What do these changes mean for Neighborhood Watch? They mean that we cannot form neighborhood watch groups until we first restore that lost sense of neighborhood we once had. If you're old enough to remember "party lines", e.g., telephone lines shared by 2 or more telephone subscribers, you're old enough to remember when some of St. Albans' neighborhoods still had a sense of unity and cohesiveness, a sense that somehow we're all in this thing together and we have to watch each other's backs. 

That's why you should attend your neighborhood watch block party, ice cream social, cookout or a special speaker series. Your Watch group is trying to get people together, in one place, where they can, perhaps, regain a sense of neighborhood or experience it for the first time. 
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HigginbothamAtLarge reads all comments but only PUBLISHES comments from identified commenters. HigginbothamAtLarge, frankly, has no respect whatsoever for people anonymous commenters. There's no Ring of Gyges for me so there's no Ring of Gyges for you.

Why I'm Campaigning For Shelly Ward, Write-In Candidate For St. Albans' Ward 9 Council Seat

Because Shelly Ellis has already done more for her ward and for the city of St. Albans than most sitting council members have done, I'm urging residents of ward 9 - that's the area south of Kanawha Terrace and between the Vine Street hill area and the Hughes Drive area - to get out and vote for Shelly Ellis in the June 1 General Election.

I met Shelly through her citywide involvement in Neighborhood Watch. I'm the Neighborhood Watch coordinator in ward 4, Shelly is the Neighborhood Watch coordinator in ward 9. It's a thankless job that takes much more time and effort than meets the eye, but it's also the best way I know to really get to know your ward. Because of Shelly's experience and boundless energy, she's become more of a Neighborhood Watch Coordinator At-Large, assisting in the start-up and development of Neighborhood Watch programs in other wards around town. 

I don't live in Shelly's ward and I can't vote for her but II plan to campaign for Shelly in the South Vine and South Walnut areas of ward 9 because St. Albans needs council members who will get out and work for their wards and for St. Albans.
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Election Information:

Upcoming City Election Dates:
General: June 1, 2013
Polls Open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM

Early Voting Period:
May 17 - 29, 2013
The City Clerk’s Office will be conduction Early Voting in person May 17-29, 2013 during our normal business hours of Monday – Friday 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. There will also be early voting on Saturday May 18th & 25th from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. The office will be closed on Monday, May 27th in observance of Memorial Day. The City Clerk’s Office is located at 1499 MacCorkle Avenue, St. Albans.