 I think we're live. Yay! Good morning. Good morning, almost afternoon. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this awesome workshop with a very fun title. How parties, parking and porta-potties led to a great neighborhood program of partnership. I got it right, straight up. So my name is Barry Cram. I am a Community Engagement Liaison for the City of Fort Worth in this office, and I'll be your host for this workshop. Before we get started, can I go through the drill? And maybe we don't need to go all the way through the drill, but I've heard this before, just double-check and make sure the inbox is where you get private messages, and so if you see a greener red dot, someone's dingin' ya, or pinging ya, and wants to talk, which very well may happen, especially if you leave a comment or you have a good substantive question or something like that, and someone wants to talk to you about that furthermore. So anyway, just know that that's the private side. Right below that is the chat function. That's public, that's public content there. So it's all being recorded and streamed. So just remember that. You also have below that is the questions tab, the icon. That's where you'll put all your questions in. That's where I'm gonna be fielding questions and making sure that if you have anything that you need to discuss afterwards, it'll be a Q&A, do it there. If you put it in the chat, I might miss it. And so just specifically though, questions will go there. Below that is the poll. Do we have a poll? We do not, which is fine. Below the poll icon is the people and the viewers. So you can kind of see who's attending. And then the last one, the very bottom icon is the files. So there are already a couple of files that have been uploaded there. I believe, yeah, it's the PowerPoint presentation that you see as well. Yes, I'll reference them. So everyone will know what they are. Fantastic. So, all right. I mean, now that we've got that all covered, I'll introduce you to our lovely and gracious workshop presenter, Tabitha Butler. She is a colleague and a coworker of mine and we've been serving several years in the same office here in community engagement. And although she's doing now, she's the volunteer program coordinator for the whole city. That position is still in our office. And so we get to work alongside each other every day. So, Tabitha, I'm glad to help facilitate and host this. I'm gonna turn my video off here, but I'll still be here and log in the questions. So take it away. Thanks so much, Barry. Well, hello, Nusa. I hope you're having a great time at the conference and you are learning all about steering your neighborhood forward. So I have a little something for you today. I'm hoping that even if you don't live near a university or a high school or an event center or anything like this, you can still take some really, really key points from this presentation about how we created partnerships as well as a good neighbor program in a part of the city of Fort Worth community. So like Barry said, my name is Tabitha and I am a proud member of the community engagement office. And for the last four years, this has been my baby, the TCU neighbor to neighbor program. It's a partnership between the city of Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, which here we say TCU, neighborhoods and college students. And our mission is to provide resources and build positive relationships between all of those partners, the neighbors, the homeowners and the student renters. And through all of its up and down over the last four years, it's definitely something I'm very proud of in my career. I wanna share a little bit with you today. I wanna talk about the history of the program and how it started. So how did we get here? Why do we need this? I'm gonna give you an overview of the program and what it looks like now. And of course, I'm gonna share highlights, things that you could hopefully take with you. And in the end, we'll talk about some lessons learned. And of course, I'll do a question answer session. If you do have any questions, just be sure to put them in the question tab. So how did parties, parking and porta-potties lead to a good note neighbor program? Imagine you're sitting on the back porch after a long day of work, enjoying your family and maybe a beverage of choice. And then you hear it, bump, bump, bump. The beats coming from two houses down. So you begin to investigate and you see cars aligning the street, most of them illegally parked. It's another unofficial frat party, a few houses down in the middle of your neighborhood. And of course, if it couldn't get anywhere, you see it, the purple porta-potty. Not that this is just gonna be any party. This is gonna be a big party. And the next morning when you wake up and you walk outside, the yards are covered in red solo cups. Yeah, you probably should have bought stock in those cups. And of course, there's trash everywhere. The carts are full and they're overflowing with garbage. That's the scene Thursday through Sunday in the neighborhoods surrounding TCU. Texas Christian University, known as, of course, TCU, is located in Fort Worth, Texas. It's a D1 university and it's got a total of 11,379 students with only 48% living on campus, which means everyone else either lives in apartments, they live in other parts of the city or they live in the 14 neighborhoods that are surrounding TCU. Some residents, they love it. They wanna live by campus, they love people. They want all that college chaos, right? But for others, they may still have that desire to live near campus, but it is definitely not a positive experience for them. There are so many different concerns living around a college campus, living near a high school, maybe even an event center. And during the school days, the streets are always lined with tons of parking, students, even staff, trying to get as close to campus as possible. And on the weekends, the parties are constant. One resident actually shared that their neighbor got so fed up that they just abandoned their house. They didn't even sell it, they just left because they were so irritated with the party house next door to them. And with that, the TCU area started to see even more increase of parties, noise and trash issues because developers were coming in to the area and they're buying up homes or maybe even two homes with two lots and they're building what they call stealth dorms. And there's a picture on there for you to kind of see. It's that big mansion looking. And these are houses, right? But they have five bedrooms and five bathrooms. So they've really taken on this dorm-like residency in the middle of these neighborhoods. And so for years, the city kept hearing those complaints, right? They're really upset about these stealth dorms, residents are, they're really upset about the parties. And so the community got together with the city and in 2014, they created the TCU overlay. Now the overlay is all about zoning. It's a zoning district. It has 14 neighborhoods in it. You can see a little bit on the map surrounding campus. And basically what it does is it limits the number of unrelated people that living in a single family home. So when they built those stealth dorms, they're planning on five residents living there, right? Well, the overlay, the ordinance for the overlay says that no more than three unrelated persons can live in that home. So that kind of started to help the situation, right? So it's all about zoning. So maybe we're seeing less development, less stealth dorms, but that did not fix the outrageous parties, the unbearable noise, issues with public intoxication and of course the dreaded parking situation. So tensions continue to still be pretty high between the neighbors and the off-campus renters. Some residents wanted the police, the Fort Worth police just to come in and put all the students, you know, in one of those wagons and send them to jail. And then some of them really, really wanted to, they've really mad at TCU and they were like, you should just kick them out of school if they're gonna have these parties. So there was a lot of strife and very few solutions. Have you ever heard, don't be a complainer, make things better? I like that saying. Well, that's what the neighbor to neighbor program and what our neighbors were trying to do. They wanted to make things better for themselves and also for the students and they just didn't know where to start. So in 2015, with the support of the city manager's office and at the encouragement of lots of neighborhood leaders, a good neighbor committee was created and later coined the neighbor to neighbor program. The ultimate goal, bring everybody together, homeowners, renters, developers, the university and students. They held, over the next year, they held monthly meetings. They started to troubleshoot some of those neighborhood issues and concerns, specifically those pesky porta-potties that would just pop up in backyards, right the day before a party was gonna happen, loud music and the parking issues. And a lot of process were starting to be created. They were kind of figuring out, okay, well, who are we gonna notify when residents have these issues and determining different processes? They even trialed a residential parking program in one of the neighborhoods, but the complaints, they just continued, even with these monthly meetings. So in 2017, 2018 school year, the city's community engagement office, our office, we took over to facilitate. We stepped in to facilitate the program because we were seeing that there weren't things happening as much, right? There's still all these complaints flowing in and that the committee really needed some guidance. They needed that support. And so before kind of bringing everyone to that table, we were like, hmm, you know, we have 14 neighborhoods who are in the overlay, but we only have like a few of them that even come to the meetings or their voices aren't even being heard. And so we created an educational workshop for all of the 14 neighborhoods and including members of city council. And so they came to that workshop and our ultimate goal was, of course, to increase that participation. The workshop really discussed what we're kind of talking about today, that the history of the overlay, why do we even have it, the history of the problems in the area? I mean, as you guys know, neighborhoods are a lot of times are in transition with new leadership and new people coming in. So we needed to provide that background information before having everyone at the table. Everyone was introduced to the city staff that were involved, the TCU representatives. And we also talked about kind of what the committee looked like at the time and began to discuss the future. And I actually put, that's a picture of the workshop booklet and that's in the files tab. If you wanna take a look at it, it'll also give you more information on the program and the TCU overlay and what we shared with all of those residents before we continued with the committee. And we were so excited because after that workshop, we were able to increase involvement to nine out of 14 neighborhoods participating. And now in 2021, at our last meeting, we had 12 neighborhoods out of the 14 represented. And so they're still involved and we just keep increasing that involvement as time goes on. And then TCU at this time also added some more representation. They added their vice chancellor of public safety, they added the communications department, started to join in and participate with the committee and we were able to add actual student representation. So before this, for the last few years, there really hadn't been a lot of student participation. And so we were able to do that as well. And in 2021, we've also been able to add a little bit more staff. We have also an assistant athletics director from TCU who is also a part of our committee and she has been a big asset as we talk about parking and traffic issues when it comes to athletics and events. And so what does the TCU neighbor to neighbor program look like? It has definitely come a long way since it's 2014, 2015 beginnings. And it's definitely more focused on solutions versus problems, finding out and figuring out those processes so that we can actually address some of these concerns. So one of the focuses is education, providing off-campus renters, TCU students and even the residents and homeowners that live there some sort of education piece. We're also focusing on neighborhood communication. So being actually providing that up-to-date information to residents and to students. And then another key part of the program is community member roles. What is everybody's, when you're on a committee that I don't know about you, do you wanna be on a committee that you just have a meeting, right? That's not what we need for this. This is not a good way to spend everybody's time. So we had to define and figure out what are everyone's roles gonna be and what are those processes that we're gonna put in place to address some of these pretty crazy concerns. I have some really good stories about what students have done off-campus and I'm happy to share those later. I also wanna talk about how the program celebrates. We celebrate the accomplishments and the successes that we've had and really show you how the mindset has changed from 2015 and to now. So let's look at that educational piece first. So to when you were in college or you were in 19, 20 years old, did you know what you were doing? Did you know what day you're supposed to put the trash out, when you're supposed to take it in? What if you move from another state which there's a huge population of students that go to TCU that are not even from Texas and you came here and you're living on your own for the first time, you wouldn't know what you're doing, right? You wouldn't know to go next door and ask your neighbor for, hey, do you know when we put out a recycling and what goes in there, right? So the committee really knew they had to get to the root and that was becoming that educational resource. So the first thing that we did was we created a good neighbor education, a brochure. The brochure was put together. It was a collaborative effort. The committee worked together to decide what was gonna be in that brochure, what type of neighborly advice we wanted to give students, contact information, because we also want them to know that the city and the community is a resource for them, but we also wanted to highlight those rules and those ordinances in our city. So it includes information, like defining what the noise ordinance is, defining when you put out your garbage cart and when you bring it in and it gives advice like, don't speed through the neighborhood, get to know your neighbors, all those different things. And I actually put that in the files for you as well. So you can kind of see some of the information that's on there. And this has become such a useful tool for our committee. Our neighborhood police officer, who I'll talk about a little bit more in a minute, uses that brochure when he goes and speaks to students in the neighborhood, our code officer in the neighborhood will, when they're putting up, they're taping that violation on the door, they'll actually tape the brochure with the violation to provide just a little bit more guidance on some of the things and rules and regulations that are here in the city. We also really encourage our neighborhoods that are in the area to partner with our office to create welcome bags with lots of information about being a citizen of Fort Worth and living in a home. And of course we include that brochure there. I mean, when you hear stories about how impactful taking over that welcome bag and maybe some cookies is to a student, anything that we can get to grab their attention. And so that's a huge encouragement. And then of course, TCU has some of the brochures as well to give to students. On top of the brochure, we also developed a webpage. And I will put this in the chat at the end, the address for you guys, but it has some of the same information as the brochure, but it gives really quick links for if they have a question about recycling, they can go there, if they have a question about reporting an issue, they need help with something, who to call in an emergency that's separate from what TCU provides them. Because once you live off campus, you're in Fort Worth jurisdiction. You may still be a TCU student, but you're still living as a resident of Fort Worth. So it's important that they get that information not just from campus, but also from the city as well. And then every year TCU, every semester, the fall and spring TCU offers a off-campus housing fair. So a lot of property management companies come in, they set up booths and they're encouraging students as they become juniors and seniors to live off campus. And with that, they have all sorts of goodies and fun stuff. You gotta bring goodies and fun stuff too to give to them as well as educational material about living off campus and of course the brochure. And sometimes they are really excited to see me because of something really cool, like a reusable straw. But sometimes I'm just throwing brochures and bags and yelling, be a good neighbor. But it's a great opportunity that the university gives the committee to come in and share some of that information and talk to students one-on-one. And we also focus on neighborhood communication. So we have our education piece, but we also wanted to increase and focus on how we communicate with our neighborhoods and how the neighbors communicate with each other. Trying to change that messaging from all negativity and outrageous parties and porta-potties and parking and all of those things, we have to communicate that somehow. So through that, the first thing that we do, the committee, the facilitator, the community engagement office, we send out EBLAS to our neighborhood leaders, our 14 neighborhood leaders groups. And we just let them know important things that may be going on that would may end up being potential issues for their neighborhood. So recently, it was graduation and students start moving out. And so we sent out reminders about when both pickup is and what to do with trash carts and those different things and ask the neighborhoods to also spread the word. Now TCU on their end, their communications team, they also created TCU neighborhood news. So on their end, they send out EBLAS to anybody who wants to sign up for it with information like we're gonna have fireworks after the football game. We're going to have increased traffic because of this construction project. And that has really, really helped because not only are our residents and our neighborhoods hearing from the city, they're hearing from the university as well. And then they're also hearing from the committee. So they're just getting it from all ends so that we don't miss anybody. And then we also used to communicate with neighborhoods and students is the city city news platform. So every semester our communications team will put out a really great story about being a good neighbor and we'll share that on social media. And then of course we turn around, we share that with the committee and we ask TCU to share it, the student government to share it in different organizations as well. And we have really, really seen a large increase of feedback from just sharing those articles. We've even had the TCU newspaper and the journalism students come and do a bunch of stories on the program and what it looks like. So it's any way that we can, we're gonna communicate what we're trying to do and communicate those education messaging. And of course, as you guys know, a huge part of communication and neighborhood communication is involving the neighborhood association. So we speak at neighborhood association meetings. Every neighbor has their own committee, neighborhood has their own committee member and they speak at neighborhood meetings. They're talking to their neighbors, they're spreading the word as much as they can. We can't reach every single one of those off-campus students, but guess what their neighbors can. And so we really, really rely on that as a form of communication. And I'm sure you're all familiar with another way neighbors like to communicate with each other. And that's using Nextdoor. Nextdoor has been a big tool for us. When the community engagement office took over this program, we formed a great partnership with the TCU communications office. And when they send out those neighborhood news emails that I mentioned earlier, our team also posts those on Nextdoor as a courtesy to the university. And right now, within a mile of campus, we have 8,963 residents. So we know that we are reaching lots more people than we were just a few years ago. But I do have a fun story I can tell you about how smart our TCU students are. So a few years ago, they figured out that the neighborhoods were communicating with each other about where parties were through Nextdoor and they would be commenting like, there's a party at this X, Y, and Z house and we're gonna call the police. Will the students also join to Nextdoor? Cause don't forget they're also residents and they figured out, hey, as soon as they post about a party and they're gonna call the police, we'll just shut it down and we'll go to another house. And so that's what they were doing. So yes, Nextdoor is great. It's a great tool to spread our message, but we also know that there are students on there. So we make sure that we do provide that good neighbor information there as well and remind residents that going off on Nextdoor is probably not the best option in getting a party to stop. I mean, I guess if you live Nextdoor to one and you wanna move somewhere else. So of course we live and learn about our processes there. So, but neighbors are loving all this increased communication and it's really helped us move the committee forward. So one of the most important aspects of our committee is what does everybody do? Why have all these people at the table? And education, communication, yes, they're key, but we all have a role to play. So one of the things that city staff, so let's look at city staff first. So the type of roles that we have there, of course as we have our city council members, they, we have two TCU area covers two council districts. So we have great buy-in from those two council members. They actually attend every meeting. They're always a part of the conversation and they share materials with residents. They actually probably receive the most concerns or issues that are happening in the city and around the TCU area. So their involvement is definitely key and having their buy-in and support is one of the things that really helps keep our committee together. And then the Fort Worth Police Department. So when we first started the committee back in that 2014, 2015 era, we had, you know, the big ones coming, the deputy chiefs, the sergeants, those commanders, those were the people that were at the table. And over time, we realized, you know what? At our committee meetings and a part of this, who we really need at the table is our neighborhood police officer. That's who needs to be here. He's the one in the neighborhoods every day talking to residents. And one of the things that he implemented when he came into this role is he works with TCU and the TCU police department. So when he comes in on Monday morning and sees that there were five calls about this one house having issues and that there was a report filed, he also goes back and follows up with them again. So they might have gotten a ticket the night before but they're gonna get another visit from their neighborhood police officer. And it might include also a visit from Student Affairs or TCU police just to reinforce this, you can't have this party at your house. You can't do these things, you can't break these rules. And he's a huge advocate for the neighborhoods. He attends all their meetings and discusses those processes that we have in place with them. We also have code compliance. We have the neighborhood code officers who attend meetings. But before that, in the beginning, again, it was superintendents, it was directors and was like, you know what, you guys are great and we need your buy-in and we want your buy-in but who we need here at these meetings are the people that are boots on the ground. They're the ones who are out there in the neighborhood and they know what's going on and they know the violations every day that students are making and they really are a key aspect of when we are developing education material. We have planning and development staff that is involved. They were definitely more involved in the beginning as we were coordinating and creating the TCU overlay but there's kind of two parts, right? There's the TCU overlay and then there's our Good Neighbor program and they kind of started to mesh together and so there are definitely violations to the overlay and so our planning and development team has to get involved with that. And then community engagement. Our role is to facilitate the program. We're not the fixers, we can't, I can't make anybody do anything but I can connect people to the resources that they need. I can help students work through situations and we make sure that the meetings are planned and that the day-to-day communication happens for our committee and we make sure we take care of the webpage and those types of things but we really, really leave the rest of it up to TCU, the city staff and to our neighborhood leaders. So let's take a look at who's involved on the level with TCU. So we have our main component which is student affairs. We have a vice chancellor of student affairs who is our main contact at TCU. He's the one who's helped really bring all of these different things together. He brings with him the housing and residence team and together they have all developed some great processes that we have in place. For instance, if there is an issue with a house and a resident calls 911 and then the next day or the Monday after when the MPO also gets that report he's reaching out directly to student affairs and they're coordinating their game plan. So think about this. Think if you were having a party at your house and a police officer came and you had a noise violation. Okay, great, you've got your ticket and that's it. Your boss, I mean, they're not coming over, right? Because you got a noise violation but for these students, their boss is coming. They've got their ticket, another police officer and the dean of students coming to their house letting them know, hey, you can't do this in this neighborhood. And so developing that process and sharing that with residents has probably been one of the best things that this committee has been able to come up with. They're also very open to residents, emailing them directly and working with them through their problems as well. They can't send all the students to jail like some people want, but they're huge advocates of solving that problem and making sure that residents know that they're there. The TCU police department, they don't have jurisdiction off campus but they are still very involved in supporting the Fort Worth police department and of course, student affairs. And just this year, the neighborhood police officer, student affairs, Greek life and the TCU PD meet with every fraternity and sorority before school starts, they bring our brochure and they talked to them about what it means to be a good neighbor and what are the consequences gonna be if you do throw these parties or you are at these parties and neighbors are submitting complaints about your fraternity or sorority. And then we also just added, like I mentioned earlier, TCU athletics to the conversation and committee because we have a lot of issues with parking and traffic. And of course, they wanna make sure that their athletes are also being the best neighbors that they can be. And I have mentioned TCU communication several times in their role and they have been a huge advocate for what we're doing at the city level and they are making sure that all the neighborhoods are communicated with as much as possible. And so for those really important people, I like to say that are on our committee and a part of our program are our neighborhood leaders. So we have 14 neighborhoods and 12 of those neighborhoods are participating and a part of the program on an annual basis. And their job is to be that liaison between their neighborhood and all of these other people. So we don't have to take the entire committee, all these TCU staff and all of these city staff and all the other people involved to every neighborhood meeting, they have their liaison and it's their job to go back to their neighborhood and really explain to them what those processes are. So what do I do if there's a party? Who do I call if the trash isn't picked up? What do I do if on the other end, if I know a student is having issues at their home, who can I call? And so that's what we put on those neighborhood leaders that serve on our committee, they're that liaison between the committee and their neighborhood. They also come and participate and give their feedback on all of the educational material we create, they're there to just discuss any concerns that they have and they really are kind of the backbone of why we exist. And they really, really support this committee in this program and they have gone from being hostile and upset with the university and the city to being advocates for the university and the city. And even for some of those students, especially the ones who of course always follow the rules and they really do care about what they do. They also don't know yet. So I don't think I have any committee members in here right now that they're actually gonna help TCU received a grant to create some videos about neighboring and about being an adult and being safe with drugs and alcohol and the committee is actually gonna help create some of those videos. And I'm super excited because that has been my ultimate goal is to get TCU involved in using students and actually teaching them and providing resources that are more than what we have to students on neighboring and of course just being a resident of Fort Worth. And last but not least, we do also have a few other people who work with us. Of course we've got our wonderful student government. I separated them out from TCU staff because they aren't staff. They're volunteer students who are one donating their time and giving to leading their campus, but they also participate in our committee and I have some great stories about what they've been able to offer and the questions that they ask. And in a few minutes, I'm gonna tell you something that the student government did on their own that has made everyone on the committee really proud. And then we also have a few developers and property managers who do participate in the program. The thing about that is it's the good ones, right? It's the ones who already are providing their students off-campus renters with what they need, but we continually try to pull in those property managers even if it's just for one meeting or one moment so that they can share those educational resources with those who are renting their property. And every once in a while, we do of course have guests come in, especially if there's something that none of us can answer that are at the table. For instance, if there's a large construction project, we know it's gonna affect everyone that lives in the neighborhood as well as students that we might have them come in and present to the committee as well. It's that communication piece, right? You'll hear me say that again. It's about over-communicating your message. And so defining all of the different committees and those processes that we have in place has been a really important piece to what our program looks like and its success. We've got strong relationships being built and created. Residents know who to call. They know when they should call the police, when they should call code, when they should call TCU Student Affairs. It's no longer a guessing game, which it was for years. And it's provided for quicker response time and students are held accountable for their actions. So I wanted to share with you guys some highlights from our program. We're not perfect by any means. We're learning every day, but we've been able to really provide less hostility and more collaboration over the years. So one of the things is that we have less meetings now. So we used to meet two to three times, we used to meet every month and now we only meet honestly two times a year, each semester, which in my book, better processes definitely equals those less meetings. And I don't know about you, but who doesn't love less meetings? We've also been able to work with the Fort Worth Police Department, especially with the advocacy of our neighborhood police officer to actually increase patrol Thursday, Friday and Saturdays through the TCU area. It's become a great partnership with TCU, helping us provide those patrols with some funding. And this has really, really helped, especially with those noise complaints and different things because a noise complaint might not get as much attention unless somebody calling in says, no, it's a huge party, there's miners drinking, those types of things. And so just having more officers, just even patrolling the area has really, really helped with the decrease of parties. One of the things that I told you guys about earlier was our issues with bulk trash. So when students would move out, they'd just leave all of their trash on the side and their bulk trash might not need to be picked up for a whole another month. And so residents are just staring at it. So during move out times, it was definitely an issue. It was shared in our meetings. And so we came up with a communication plan, but our student representatives that were in attendance went back to the student government and they created their own flyers and they rented their own dumpsters for off-campus students. They didn't tell any of us until we saw the flyer and they were like, oh yeah, you know, we talked about that in the meeting and we wanted to help because everyone was complaining about our trash. So it's something to be proud of when you know that something came from a meeting and that you've got students who are involved and who see a problem, come up with a solution without anyone else's help and just do it on their own. And that's the goal. That's the goal of our program. We've also been able to increase our participation to 12 out of the 14 neighborhoods represented. And a lot of these neighborhoods are different and it's been great to have more of them at the table talking about their issues they're having. One neighborhood may have a huge issue with parking where the other might have more of an issue with parties. And so having all of those stakeholders together even virtually this past year has really been a huge highlight for us. Neighbors know who to contact at the city and TCU. They're helping each other. I can't see conversation threads on next door but I will have residents send them to me and I'm seeing how our committee members are just jumping in and saying, hey, there's a party going on, call 911. They know what to do and they're solving their problems on their own and they're not calling us, they're not calling city officials or student affairs as much as they were in the past. And Fort Worth and the TCU PD have been visiting fraternities and sororities. Having that partnership has really, really taken off and helped with our Greek life members participating in off-campus parties. They try to organize other things and they know that the neighbor's gonna call and say, well, I saw this sorority sticker on the car and it's gonna end up being an issue for them moving forward. So having their involvement has been really beneficial as well. And then another wonderful highlight and it's actually something that really made me excited and proud was when the conversation at the table turned from negative to how do we solve a problem in regard to student safety? So if you're not familiar with TCU there is a busy cross section. The university is separated and students have to cross the street back and forth to get to the various buildings. And there's a lot of jade walking, there's a lot of cars not stopping, there were students getting hit by cars and the committee really came together to encourage TCU and the city to really take awareness to that situation and to make sure that our students were remaining safe. So when you have that shift from that negative to those concerns, you really take it as a highlight when you can come together and help solve a real problem that is facing students and their safety. And of course, we're very excited that in 2019 we were able to present the program at NUSA and we're awarded NUSA's Best Neighborhood Program third place and that means a lot to these people who volunteer their time to be a part of this program and who are really dedicated to making their neighborhoods the best and to taking care of everyone who lives there. Now, when we talk about our program or when we end a meeting, what we hear are those positive stories as well. So we have that transition from talking about student safety, but there's always stories about flowers being left on doorsteps and messages from students thinking their neighbors. There's stories about friendships, students turning to their neighbors when their landlord won't help them. We have the students having issues with flooding in their home and that they were renting and their landlord wouldn't help them and they just happened to run into their neighbor and that neighbor was like, nope, that's not gonna happen. And they became their advocate. So it's not just about living their campus and having to deal with the negative stuff, the parties, the porta-potties, the trash. It's also about those relationships and friendships that have been made and how these students are learning how to be residents of Fort Worth from their neighbors. I wish that I had the whole committee with me right now, but I do want to introduce you to a few of those members by showing you a video that we put together. So give me just a second. I'm gonna stop sharing the slideshow and turn on the video. It would start sometimes on a Thursday night with parties and pre-parties and light parties and they would be very loud. Some would have music in the backyard, some would have bands. They would grow in number until you'd have up to 150, maybe 200 students walking down your block. I think what we primarily had was an issue of student misbehavior and that was parties, noise, traffic, trash. They all entail furniture, porta-potties, and solo cups. Those are the main ingredients for the parties around TCU area. There was a lot of beer and alcohol things and a couple of times things came over my fence, my back fence. You feel so victimized by that, which sounds silly, but it's so disrespectful. Neighborhoods surrounding the TCU campus are generally quiet and peaceful. Beautiful homes on tree-lined streets, but when schools back in session, the atmosphere changes, especially where college students are living on their own for the first time. Loud parties, loud music, but the biggest thing is just frustration. I mean, everybody, all the neighbors talked and we didn't have a solution and we didn't know what to do and we had wrong information, there was no communication. We didn't have a voice. And so what developed over time was a hostile environment for the neighbors and the students. The students felt like they weren't wanted in the neighborhood and the neighbors were just livid, calling TCU, calling the mayor, and nobody ever felt there were any resolutions back in those days. Neighborhood leaders reached out to the city of Fort Worth for help. The community engagement office arranged a series of meetings and the TCU Neighbor to Neighbor program was born. The top people from the city manager's office is the top people from TCU. It's our neighborhood police officers. It's the head of security at TCU. It's amazing. I mean, code compliance, very interested neighbors. Our monthly meetings and moving to quarterly meetings, we get to talk about issues that we're seeing. We can come together to say, okay, are we all seeing, hearing the same things? How do we work together? This meeting has allowed us as neighborhood leaders to get to know the compliance people, get to know our NPO, and get to know the people at TCU. By working with them, we've been able to mitigate a lot of issues. Communication and relationship building were the key to finding realistic solutions, steps all stakeholders could take to improve neighborhood relations. I think it's more widely known that neighbors can call our office and that we'll respond to people. The police are clearer with students when they're going to talk to them about issues. I'm hands-on with the TCU police, as well as they share information with me and I share information with them. So if we have repeat problems from neighborhood parties and kids are unruly, if we go to TCU, they're taking administrative action against them, which is substantially decreased, I think some of our parties. I get to know people on a personal level, face-to-face, they know how to contact me and we have a great working relationship. Some kids have never lived on their own before and they really don't know to take in the trash or the trash carts or how to be a good neighbor. So education became a top priority. The city of Fort Worth worked with TCU to create a neighbor-to-neighbor webpage and brochure, specifically aimed at students living off campus. It details parking, noise, trash and recycling rules in TCU Purple. The city has a wealth of resources and what we needed to do was be able to find better ways to put those resources in the hands of students and our brochure that we've developed, website improvements, just knowing how to get students to the information has been a very big help. So we have the TCU neighbor-to-neighbor pamphlets that I definitely initiate and give to the students when I come in contact with them so that they can know when their bulk pickup is, when their trash day is, they have non-emergencies, what number to call. The education effort must be repeated every semester. As new students move off campus, but it pays off, complaints to the city and TCU have declined since the neighbor-to-neighbor program started and the message also resonates with students. People should definitely have to pick up the trash, especially with a lot of college students that gets kind of dirty. I mean, if you've got your trash out in the lawn or if you don't keep everything nice and tidy, it starts to look run down and ratty and it just kind of brings down all the people around you. Don't be too loud on the weekends, recognize that there are families and students and children all around and that you just have to be a little bit more respectable to them. I think our students know more about how to live within the neighborhood, how to be a community member because the neighbors are out talking to the students. The students are out talking to the neighbors. Neighbors have noticed the change too. Not only are there fewer complaints, but attitudes have changed for the better. Some neighbors stopped being so angry and now we encourage, meet your TCU neighbors, ring the doorbell, exchange phone numbers. If they're going to have a party, let them come tell you and work out details. I think they understand the rules and it's been really good. It's night and day, night and day. We realize that we're all kind of in this together. We love the university, we love the neighborhoods surrounding the university and by working together, we can make all of it a better place for our students, for our neighbors. For more information about the city's TCU Neighbor to Neighbor program, visit Fort Worth Texas dot gov slash TCU neighbors. Well, I hope that you enjoyed the video and you learned a little bit more about the program and you got to meet some of our neighborhood leaders who have really been advocates and have really helped bring this program to life in their own community. And so we know that we're not, we're not perfect and we definitely have to start over every, we have to start over every semester, right? But we, the committee, they really do strive to make sure that Fort Worth is the best place for everyone, for homeowners, for longtime residents, renters and of course those who may just be here for a semester. And since we started, we've learned a lot and I'm hoping to share just a few points with you of things that maybe you can take with you to your own neighborhoods and communities. If you're wanting to not even just handle, you know, university relations or school relations, but just ideas in forming your own partnerships within your community. And so one of the things that we really learned for us is you've got to have some sort of facilitator, somebody who can bring everybody together, handle the little stuff, make sure that you have somewhere to meet, you know, answer questions from residents because most everyone who's on the committee has other jobs or they're volunteers and having somebody who's going to be consistent with that communication has really, really helped a lot of trust between our office but that trust between TCU, the city staff, the neighbors because in the beginning, they didn't trust anybody though. Anybody was going to fix the problem. And like, you know, they wanted everyone just to go to jail but having someone there that can help facilitate those relationships and build that trust is really, really important to creating any sort of program that's going to be consistent and that's going to give you some really, really great partnerships. I mean, we're from yelling at each other about porta-potties to helping the university put together a new neighboring program and video. So you'll get there but you've got to build that trust. Making sure that you identify the key partners that you need, okay? So who needs to be there? What partnerships do we need? Do we need all of these? There's a lot of businesses around TCU. Do we need them involved? No, probably not unless there was an issue with students vandalizing those businesses then there would be a reason for them to be apart. So identify who you, who that you need. When we started the committee, we didn't have students on our committee. We didn't have developers and property managers and over time it was like, hey, those are some other partners that we definitely need to bring in. Why don't we have students here? I mean, they're the ones who live in the neighborhood. Shouldn't they be a part of the conversation too? And then for us starting with that support from the city manager's office, city council, the chancellor of the university, having that top leadership there with us from the beginning, of course you need that buy-in, you need that support but over time we realized we really needed to end with those that are really boots on the ground. The people that live there, the officers who handle those violations and those issues and the right people that can help us create the best messaging and education material is who we need there all the time and who are active with this program and these different partnerships. You always want that leadership support but that doesn't mean that you can't go and create something amazing and something beneficial to the community if you don't have that. You can start with the grassroots. You can start with those boots on the ground to get you going. One of the key things for us coming in was there wasn't a lot of communication and so now we just communicate all the time. We over communicate. We're communicating with the neighborhoods. We're communicating with the students. You know, it doesn't matter how often you say it. You just have to keep saying it. We have new students every semester. We have new people moving into the neighborhood every semester. We have new leadership coming in. So saying it over and over again is okay. Remember over communicate to help not only build that trust in relationships but to get your message across that you need. And for us and for our program we have to always think about that mission. We always come back to, well, how are we going to educate our residents, our students or whoever to teach something to, we have to come back to that. So we can sit here and we can complain all day long about everything but what is the mission of our program? Okay, our mission that we, yeah, we wanna let everyone's voices be heard but we're here to come up with solutions and to figure out, well, how can we teach these students and create future Fort Worth residents? There are so many students who go to TCU and they don't leave. They become your neighbors. And so what are we doing to create good neighbors every day? So when I look back at the beginning to now and we have that shift from so much negativity and we're starting to focus more on student safety, how do we help students with less alcohol use? That would help our parties, right? We're looking at walkability. How do we make sure that all these 14 neighborhoods are connected to the campus? And one of the things that came up during COVID is how do we combat student loneliness in a time when students haven't been able to have their time of their life, right? They've been quarantined, they don't get to go to class and so there was a lot of talk about, okay, ooh, they're having a party and they don't have en masse but they're also lonely. So we're looking at how do we create those great good neighbors and make sure that we're also taking care of them? We can be angry that they threw that party but also are they okay? And that makes me very proud when I look back and see that shift in mentality of our program. So collaborating, educating and providing those solutions is what our program's dedicated to and we're together making Fort Worth the best place to live, work, play and of course, go to college. So I hope you enjoy today's presentation. If you have any questions, if you'll put them in the question tab, I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about the program. If you wanna join Barry and I, you can raise your hand and he'll let you in or I'll let you in if you wanna chat but as you see right there, the website is fortworthtexas.gov slash tcu neighbors and once you go to that page, you can also link to the video if you'd like to watch the video again. Anyone? Anyone? I mean, you covered a lot. I don't know if I'd have any questions. It's a lot of working pieces so. There's also almost the same type of program presentation going on right now at the same time. So I feel like people might have been flipping back and forth. Nice. Well, sweet. They got a double dose. Well, if no one has any questions, we can wrap this up. Don't forget to click on the, you have the files there. She type with uploaded the PowerPoint presentation as well as the brochure, correct? I haven't uploaded the PowerPoint yet, but I will, I'll put it in there so people can reference it. Okay, sorry about that. Oh, you have the, do you have the neighborhood, you have the booklet. Oh, I see a brochure. I see a brochure and a booklet. So, okay, my bad. All right. Well, I mean, you got enough info and you know that this is gonna have a shelf life for about three months until August, I believe. So you can log back in or maybe you go back to your co-workers somewhere and you say, hey, there's a really good, check this out and let them come around, like on your desk and so, but be a good resource. And I think that's pretty much it. It looks like we have a question from Anita. She wanted to know when we held the workshop. Anita, let me see. I believe 2016, 2017 school year was right when I started. We held that workshop when our office really began to facilitate the program. Yeah. And actually I've been here the whole time and I did not, I was not paying attention. I did not realize it took that long, you know? Like you just, after you started the process, it took a little while to, I mean, I understand it takes a little while to gain trust and whatnot on going out, but just the process itself, bringing out what works. So it's definitely a commitment. Yes. And I think having, like I mentioned somebody that like our office coming in and being able to kind of manage, you know, the program and make sure that everyone's at the table that needs to be there and make sure that we're focused on what that original mission was really, really helped because TCU staff didn't have time to do it. Other city staff didn't have time to do it and all the neighborhood leaders are volunteers and so I think being able to bring everyone together really, really did help some of the success of the program. Avatar, there's a question here from Pamela Pearson and she's just confirming that they'll be able to share the videos after Monday. Like, and I'm assuming Pamela, you mean like just like the video of this session. You won't be able to export it, right? It's not, is it something that, I mean, it's all, it's on this platform. Right, you have to log into your platform to view it but if you're in the office with somebody and you're like, hey, I wanna show you this program you could log in and sit with each other and show them or something like that. Now, the TCU neighbor to neighbor video that we showed in during this session that is on our website. So FortworkTexas.gov slash TCU neighbors and you can watch that video which is just a really nice recap of the program. And if you see Miss Dot, Dot Kent, she put together all our neighborhood tours. She helped me put that video together and it was poor thing. She was very patient with me because I had no idea what I was doing and she's an expert. So if you see her, you can thank her for that great video. Awesome. All right, Tabitha, I think we should wrap this up. Oh, someone else. She had another question. Do you plan to hold such a workshop again? Neighborhood leaders move. There are neighborhoods that don't, oh, I know the neighborhoods that don't participate. So is there a plan to like do the workshop for the neighborhood? There isn't a huge plan to do the workshop. What I have done is met one-on-one. We've met one-on-one with the neighborhood to talk about how they can participate. But it would probably be a good idea to plan one in the future. We have new council coming in and also I'm transitioning out of my current role and some page, if you guys have met, Heria is coming in to facilitate the program behind me. So it may be a good time to consider doing that as well. Especially if you are doing a program and you do have a lot of transition, you always wanna go back to the background, back to the history before trying to change processes and different things like that. Awesome, thanks Tessa. It's a lot of hard work, appreciate you. Thank you everyone else for attending, participating. I think up next is a little break and some networking sessions where you can join in and have a conversation. So please do that. And I think that's pretty much it. All right. Thank you Barry for being my room host and it was so nice to have everyone join us today and enjoy the rest of the conference. Yep, bye guys.