 and welcome the quality of life. Today we're gonna talk about neighborhood associations and how they can contribute to the well-being in the community. And today joining us is Nancy Mearing from City Development and Diane Wolzinski from Sheboygan Neighborhood Association, the Sheboygan neighborhood pride, excuse me. Welcome to the show, ladies. Thank you. Thank you. To start out with, could you each tell us a little bit about yourselves and how long you've been in the positions you're at? Sure. Go ahead. I'm a development planner with the City of Sheboygan. I've lived in Sheboygan for a year, so I've been in that position for a year. I work in, as you said, the Department of City Planning and Development. And I'm also a board member with Sheboygan Neighborhood Pride, so I work closely with them. Okay, being new to the city, it probably gives a fresh set of eyes, a new look as far as how things work and learning that way, so it's probably even helps you in your position. Definitely, yeah. Cool. Diane, how about you? I'm the current president of Sheboygan Neighborhood Pride of the Board of Directors, and I've been on SNP for a couple of years now, and this is my first year as president of the board. And I'm also a board member of Ellis Historic Neighborhood District. Wonderful, wonderful. Excuse me, to start out with, what is a neighborhood association? What does it make up, and what other types of neighborhood groups already exist in the city? Well, a neighborhood association is a geographically-based partnership between different stakeholders within the neighborhood. So that would include owners, homeowners, renters, landlords, business people, the people who lease the businesses, the business owners, faith-based groups, churches, schools, nonprofits, anyone who has a stake in that neighborhood can and should be involved in the associations. And associations are officially recognized by the city, but Sheboygan has multiple kinds of neighborhood groups at work. So we have groups that are just beginning, just holding their initial meetings. We also have groups who meet regularly, who are working toward goals and who are working up toward that association status, but they're not quite there yet, but they still are doing great work. So we have a range in Sheboygan. Okay. And currently there are three recognized neighborhoods in the city. It's Ellis Gateway and near North, which is the most recent- It's Northlats. Northlats, excuse me, sorry about that. Northlats, which has just recently been organized as status of its official association. Okay. From a geographical standpoint, where do those neighborhoods lie in the city, around by our, if there's some landmarks near of it? Well, Ellis Historic is just east of downtown near the lake. Okay. North, then Gateway is easy to notice. When you come into the city, you see the Great Community Garden and it's right off of Erie Avenue, which is a main thoroughfare in the city. It's just north of that. And then actually Northlats is just north of that. So they're all kind of centered in the middle of the city. Okay, wonderful. Cause I've always wondered, you know, I hear Northlats and being new to the concept myself, it's like, okay, where is Northlats? I try to figure it out. You know, you give them names of where does it fit geographically? So thank you for clarifying that. Where do I go to look or how do I know what neighborhood I'm actually belonging? And with that, how do I know if my neighborhood is organized or if association has been developed? How would I find that out? Sure, there's actually a few different ways to figure that out. The police department actually originally split the city up into over 70 different neighborhoods. And they did this because they do community policing. So each neighborhood has officers, neighborhood officers assigned to those neighborhoods. So you can go to Shubboyganpolice.com, which is the police website and find a map of all of the neighborhoods in Shubboygan. So you can see where you fall within what neighborhood you belong to. You can also visit the S&P website, which is Shubboyganneighborhoodpride.info. And we're working right now on getting neighborhood maps for the different neighborhoods that are in the middle of organizing or that have become associations onto that website. So you can find that there. On Shubboyganneighborhoodpride.info, you can also find meeting agendas, meeting notices, different meeting notes, different information based on what sort of organization your neighborhood is doing. So there you can find out whether or not your neighborhood is being organized. You can also call S&P, call me at city development. I can answer any questions you might have. You can talk to your community police officer. They could probably answer your questions too. So there are a lot of different ways to get those answers. On the back end of that, how do I know who my community policing officer is? Again, with that, where do I go with a look? Is this all being tied together through multiple departments across the city being involved with the organization or is it each standing alone and kind of talking together? Exactly. We try and especially with Shubboyganneighborhoodpride, they kind of act as a coordinator. We all work together for this effort and we all believe neighborhoods are so important and to strengthen neighborhoods we all need to work together. So you can find out who your neighborhood community officer is. You can call the non-emergency number at 459-3333 or you can go to the website. Actually, there's a whole listing. So it's a good way to find out. Okay, wonderful. You both members of Shubboyganneighborhoodpride. So can you tell us what is Shubboyganneighborhoodpride? What is it all about and what does it do for our neighborhoods? Sure. Shubboyganneighborhoodpride's a nonprofit organization that's really been in existence since about 2003 and it's made up of a variety of people from the religious groups of people. There are business owners, landlords, et cetera. And it's really a mixture of people who really believe in Shubboyganneighborhoodpride and want to do better and make the neighborhoods even stronger and working together for the business of Shubboyganneighborhoodpride and really making it safer and making it more productive and more prosperous. And the one thing that's unique about it also is because we have the direct link with the city and with Nancy and with Chad Pellecheco who also attends our meetings and the mayor also attends our meetings. And we also have police officers periodically that do attend also. So it's really a far-reaching group of people that go out and work with neighborhoods to get them going, help them from the startup point of setting up neighborhood meetings to taking them all the way to really becoming neighborhood associations, which is really the goal, is we want to establish more of the official neighborhood associations in the city. Sure. Does the organization have full-time people that it employs or is it volunteers- No, it's all volunteers. How does that work? Right, it's all volunteers, yes. And how would one, if they wanted to volunteer and help, how could they go about doing that? Well, if they want to become a member on the board, they certainly can go to the S&P website. They can call Nancy or contact myself and we can get them in touch with when our meetings are, we usually meet once a month. And they're open meetings so that people are welcome to come. Absolutely, and we're always looking for members, people who really have an interest in their neighborhood and really want to improve their neighborhood and make it more effective and working together on projects to strengthen that neighborhood depending on wherever they are in that process. And not just their neighborhood, anybody who's just interested in seeing an improvement in the quality of life in Sheboygan. Right. Who wants to help other neighborhoods become associations too. Okay. With that being said, say I'm in a neighborhood and it's not really organized. You know, it's there, we have neighbors and all of that. How would a neighborhood go about getting organized? Where would it go? And what does it mean to be organized? And what are the steps they would take? Well, I think one of the things they first need to, if I'm in a neighborhood that's not organized is to really to ask or think of some questions. You know, why do we want to organize? Is there an issue or is there something in that neighborhood that there's a problem? For example, is it, you know, cleanup or whatever? And then going out and getting to know your neighbors is probably the best first step because you really have to develop that core group of people who are interested and wanting to really improve that neighborhood. So even before you start thinking of becoming an association or even organizing is going out, getting those neighbors, getting to know one another, talking about issues within that neighborhood. And what do we want to improve? You know, is it a cleanup? Is it a community garden like Gateway House, which was a very ambitious endeavor that they had? But what do we want to do? Identifying our issues. And then how do we want to solve them? Developing those leadership skills within that cadre of people that can really move forward in taking that association with that neighborhood and to the next level. Okay, you kind of touched on it already, but I'll still follow up with, what are the benefits, you know, to a neighborhood by organizing? And by that, I mean, how do we improve it and how does it improve the quality of life in that neighborhood? Well, there are a lot of benefits to organizing. Organizing a neighborhood gives a stronger voice to neighbors. That is an important benefit. A group of people who are all working toward the same goal have a much stronger voice than just one person speaking out. So that's important. Also, you can develop a great relationship with the city, with the police department, with all different resources in city departments. So that's another great asset to becoming an association. You can also get involved with the Mayor's Neighborhood Leadership Cabinet and you can get, well, I'll talk more about that later, but you can get resources that way and you can learn best practices from other neighborhoods so that we can support from within and make sure that all of our neighborhoods are getting better and better. I think one of the things also to add to that is a neighborhood. If you really know your neighbors in that neighborhood, they kind of watch out for one another. So if you see something going on that's not supposed to be going on in the neighborhood, you kind of can keep tabs on that and then either contact the police department or contact that neighbor if it's not your particular area that it's happening in. So you get that closer-knit relationship. Okay. How long has the concept of neighborhood organizations been around? It's been a long time. Like I said, in Sheboygan, it's been since about 2003, but when this was organized here, we looked to other areas like Green Bay, for example, that has organized neighborhoods and they've been in existence a lot longer. I couldn't even tell you how long. Okay, so it's been a while. This isn't a fairly new concept. Right. It's a newer concept in Sheboygan. Right, sure. Other neighborhoods have been long established. Yeah. Excellent. Well, I reinvent the wheel if somebody else is doing it successfully. That would make sense. So I'm going ahead. I want to form an organization or get my neighborhood organized. And let's say I'm getting to there now and now I want to start to hold meetings for my structure. How do I go about doing that or choosing a location or holding the meetings and getting notification out? Okay, well, once you know your neighbors and if you've got a core group that you want to set up a meeting, they should contact S&P. We can give them some help in setting up the meetings, finding a location, contacting the police department to have those community officers there, contacting the city to have city representatives there. We can work out the agenda for that first meeting and help them run through that agenda so that they're more comfortable with it to really get it going and then to take them to the next level. So S&P is really that resource at the grassroots to get those neighborhoods going on that first established meeting and then from there forward. Okay. And for our viewers and myself, S&P stands for? Sheboygan Neighborhood Pride. Okay, S&P. S&P. Okay, thank you. I thought it was S&P. Not a grocery store, but Sheboygan Neighborhood Pride. Very good. Thank you. So with that being said, they have location and everything. So we're good that way. So then, what does it take? I mean, is there a legal standpoint or through what channels do we go to get a neighborhood association to be legally recognized as an entity and to participate in the whole group of benefits and services? Well, groups can meet for a long time without being associations. And if they don't ever want to be an association, that's fine. We do encourage them to become an association for the benefits that we had mentioned before. But if they want to become officially recognized by the city, there are some things that they have to do. They have to write bylaws and that includes goals. And S&P is here to help them every step of the way. So this might sound kind of daunting, but it's really not because we're here to help and we have other neighborhoods to model after. So there's bylaws. You have to hold an all-neighbor meeting, which means you have to invite every single neighbor in the boundaries of your neighborhood and you have to agree on the boundaries of your neighborhood. You also have to agree on the name of your neighborhood. So those were originally set by the police department, but neighbors can change those if they want to. So then you hold your all-neighbor meeting, you elect board members, you bring it to the common council and they accept your association. So then you are an officially recognized association. After that, you can elect officers like a president, vice president, secretary, all of that. And then you can be represented on the mayor's neighborhood leadership cabinet. Okay. So what benefits would my neighborhood get by forming a formal association? Well, like we said before, you get to be a member of the MNLC. You have the support of S&P, the city, the police department, everyone working together toward your common goals. You have common goals that are written out, a mission and a vision that are written out and agreed upon and established. So you have something to work toward. You have projects that you can brainstorm and we can help you with all of that too. But there's something to work toward. You're all coming together for a positive common goal. Okay. So we have the association recognize what happens next, how do I go from there? Well, after you become an official neighborhood, you get passed on to the mayor's neighborhood leadership cabinet. And what that is, the mayor, Mike Van der Steen, formed this cabinet. It's very new. We've only had a couple of meetings. We meet on odd months, which, so January would be one. And so then we would skip February and meet again in March. And what happens is, it's meant for the associations to get together and share best practices, what projects they're working on and what successes they've had so they can hear from each other and help each other and learn. We also have speakers at each meeting. The last meeting we had the director of the Department of Public Works come and explain all of the things the public works does and the infrastructure in the city. So it's a great opportunity to learn more about city services. And so you also get support from city staff, the chief of police, myself, Chad Damagowski, or Chad Pellishak, the chief of police, I think I said him. The mayor is there. Everybody is there to support these neighborhoods. So you get the ear of all the city departments right there. Wonderful. Now you had mentioned, Diana, earlier that it's non-profit, that S&P is non-profit. So what's the main revenue generator and by becoming a neighborhood association, does it cost the neighbors yearly fees or dues or anything like that? There are not really dues per se, but the S&P is really the fiscal agent for the neighborhoods. So they don't have to go out and establish the non-profit status. S&P has that, so then the neighborhoods are linked into that. And all the revenue that they make then is run through S&P. And obviously there's a percentage per year that we sort of assess the neighborhoods, I guess is a way to say it, that becomes our operating budget, but it's a very minimal amount. But that allows the neighborhoods then to function without having to worry about all those legal issues and things as far as being a non-profit. And the Mayor's Neighborhood Leadership, Kevin, also has grant opportunities. So that's another way for the neighborhoods to get cash to do the projects. So that's a great asset too. And actually S&P is the fiscal agent right now for the Q&A grant that the police department got for the heroin initiative in the city. So all the fiscal money and responsibilities coming through S&P. Okay. When we form our neighborhood associations, you had mentioned we form bylaws and goals and all of that. Are the bylaws the same from neighborhood to neighborhood or are they a little different? They can vary. I know ours at Ellis is a little bit different from what Gateway is. And actually we have a toolkit, so to speak, that gives you some templates of bylaws and how you set up meeting agendas and so on that people can reference. But you then have the opportunity to change those and adjust them according to your own neighborhood because we're not all the same. Okay. Okay. Does S&P also have bylaws? Yes, we do. Okay. Do they kind of roll together? You know as far as roll up into a single thing and where I'm coming from this is for the city, we're doing a mission vision and core things to get also our strategic plans together and we're doing that as well. So that's why I'm kind of asking the question as far as fishing around as far as do all the neighborhood associations and then roll up into one. They're not exactly the same. S&P's bylaws, if you look at them, are different from the neighborhoods but the core of them is pretty much the same and what's in them is pretty much the same. We encourage the neighborhoods to, we started out the first couple neighborhood associations had a really complicated bylaws and they were complex and it was difficult for people to understand them and what we want is for them to be simple and so that all the neighborhoods can get involved and understand and they aren't intimidated by the bylaws or the process. So we have a template that's very simple that they can then build upon or change however they see fit to make it appropriate for their neighborhood. Okay. You had mentioned MNLC and S&P, what is the difference between the two? Well, the mayor's neighborhood leadership council, that's the MNLC and that is a newer concept. That is about not even a year old or not even a year old. So this is just a more recent thing but I think the easiest way probably to say it is S&P will take the neighborhoods from when they're first starting to get together thinking about becoming an association. So they'll be the grassroots to get them going, get them organized and then once they're organized and established as an association, then it sort of get turned over to the MNLC who then provides a support and provides leadership opportunities to develop those leadership skills within those established organizations. So it's, we work very closely together but our two very separate entities. But it still sounds like it's a continuous full, so it sounds like a wonderful process as far as developing the neighborhood resources which is great. Could you go into more about some of the projects that are going on in the neighborhoods? Okay, well some of the things that they've done and we've talked about the community garden that Gateway has done which has been very, very successful. We've had neighborhood watch programs that have been going on out there. We've had neighborhood cleanups. I know in Ellis we've done that with neighborhood cleanups. We've had projects like planting flowers around where the Ellis signs are, beautification type things. There have been block parties. The National Night Out has involved the neighborhoods, those types of things that we're doing. And the other one that we have that I think is very successful is when the city launched the nextdoor.com opportunity to link the neighborhoods also. Okay, well that leads us right into our next question as far as nextdoor.com. How do the neighborhoods use that tool? Well nextdoor.com is, it's a third party site. So we didn't build this site, it's not ours. It's being used nationally. But it's a social networking website that's private. So it's kind of similar to Facebook because you can post and message and that sort of thing. But it's private because you have to prove where you live. They have a verification process. And then in order to join your neighborhood you have to prove that you live in that neighborhood. So you sign up and they tell you exactly what neighborhood you live in when you enter your address. You are verified and then you can go in and post on a wall similar to Facebook where you can also reply to other posts. You can keep it just to your neighborhood or you can see other neighborhoods around in the city that are posting. We have almost a thousand people in the city who are using nextdoor.com right now which is awesome. Nice. So you can also private message anyone the city uses nextdoor to post things. I post for a couple of different departments including planning. I post meeting notices, meeting agendas. I post community events. I post when there's a garbage schedule change or a leaf pickup or like that sort of thing. Anything people might, hey, this is going on. The police department posts in when crimes happen in certain area or they need information or whatever the neighbors post in. And actually it's really meant more for neighbor to neighbor communication. It's not really meant for the city to be posting to people. It's meant for them to be communicating with one another. So the best posts actually come from the neighbors when you lose a pet you can post. If you find a cat in your yard you can post. You're buying or selling something you can post. We had a great thread on there about littering and garbage pickup around. It was an area around a school in this neighborhood and this neighbor was just so tired of picking up garbage when she was out walking her dog. And she's like, is anybody else having this problem? And they went on and lots of different neighbors commenting, well, yes, I take a bag and I don't know what to do and this is where I'm finding the litter. And so it went on and on and they kind of came together around this issue. And actually someone from the school district from that school was on next door saw the thread and is now saying, well, we as a school want to be a good neighbor too. So they're working toward getting garbage cans up and letting the kids know that this is not okay. And so we're trying to work towards solving this problem. I think that's great. One of the things that I like, because I'm on next door also that I really like is if somebody new moves into your neighborhood too, that usually gets posted on there. So you get to know the neighbors that are moving in also that you can then make contacts with along the way. So I think it's a very effective tool. Say there's a neighborhood and nobody's really on it yet and I'm the first one to go on to next door. How do the other neighbors find out about it? What are the ways to communicate to them? Well, there are a few ways and they're actually super easy. So we have launched neighborhoods which are in full swing. They have members and they are posting and they're good to go at the launch neighborhoods. We have unused neighborhoods, which is like you're saying, if nobody's involved yet on next door and you're the first one to sign up, once you sign up, it becomes a pilot neighborhood which just isn't quite there. You need about 10 members to become a launch neighborhood. So a pilot neighborhood, you can still post and communicate and invite people. And there's a great way on next door to send postcards to your neighbors. You don't even have to know the neighbor's name. You can just go and click. There's a map you can click on their house and it'll automatically send for free postcards to your neighbors to invite them to next door. So if you ever see a postcard come in your mail, don't throw it out, go to nextdoor.com. You can also, if you know their email addresses, you can enter the email address and they'll send a invite that way. There's flyers if you wanna go around and hand out flyers or you can just simply, in conversation with one of your neighbors, encourage them to go to nextdoor.com and they can sign up that way too. So it's really easy. Sounds like next door is a really good communication tool. Like you said, between neighbors but it also allows the city to post major happenings going on like if there's a crime or all of a sudden you get a snow storm. Exactly. Okay, we're gonna have a snow emergency to let people know what's nice and as they can notify them on their personal devices or whatever, you don't have to be home on your computer. And I think the other nice thing where, I think sometimes Facebook got out of control as well as Twitter is all the advertising and all the noise so to speak or, okay, here I am watching TV. I'm sure next door you don't really care about that type of stuff or whatever. As far as blogs, it's a good tool. It sounds like, and I would say it's probably the preferred tool because there's so many social media sites that are out there which one do you pick and use? Well, and you know that you're talking to your neighbors. You know who you're communicating with and I think that's great. One of our last questions before we wrap is if somebody wants to know where to go to to learn more about neighborhood associations to get information, what are some good resources they can go to? Well, they can go on the S&P website and they can get information there and who to contact. There's also a toolkit on there with samples, the things that they can look at. They can go to the city planning website. They can go to the police department website. They can also contact personally one of us that are on S&P. They can definitely attend an S&P board meeting. They're open meetings so we welcome people to come at any time and we've been talking about a more effective way of getting that notice out to people. They can come to an MNLC meeting and as a matter of fact our next meeting is next week on the 20th at 6.30 at the library so people are welcome to sit in there or probably one of the I think the best ways of doing it is they can contact someone from an established neighborhood already and talk to them how they went through the process, what they're doing, what's worked, what's not worked and then to move that process forward. So there's a lot of different ways that people can get information and that we have a lot of information out there and we're continually working to add more and to update what we currently have to make it more user friendly and easier for people to really establish those neighborhoods. Sure, Nancy is there anything on the city website, planning website, technical and social courses? If you go to planning and development you'll find a neighborhood tab to click on and you can go and you can see which neighborhoods are associations, you can view, there's links to their websites, there's also a toolkit where you can find all the examples that Diane's talking about, the by-law examples, the meeting agenda examples, there's also my contact information and you can feel free to contact me and get and learn more. And the city of Sheboygan's website is www.sheboyganwi.gov and the SNP website is, do we have the address for that? Sheboyganneighborhoodpride.info. That info, wonderful. Well I'd like to thank ladies for being on the show and talking about the subject, I think it was very interesting. So, Diane, Diane and Nancy again, thank you for your time. This I think this was a great opportunity. If you have questions about neighborhood associations and like to know more about it or if you have a question, please drop us a line on our website at www.wscsheboygan.com. For Quality of Life, I'm Dave Augustine and we'll see you next time, thank you.