Bring me my weed n' seed(Or, how a neighborhood meeting validated a business plan)

THE 1177-- A strange dateline, no? Yet that's precisely where I'm writing from, as I learned last night at a meeting put on by the Ferguson Road Initiative. That's not the least of what I learned, but perhaps the most personal lesson was that the whole thing rolled out before me as a perfect justification for the Pegasus News business plan. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I mentioned in this space a couple weeks ago that I had just learned of an innovative community action group dedicated to reducing crime and improving development in the cluster of neighborhoods around me. Mine is the Eastermost border of this area, demarkated as the "Ferguson Road Initiative" (FRI). I was surprised that after a year and a half in the neighborhood, I had never heard of it before. (Mrs. Peg found a passing reference in an East Dallas advertorial in the DMN.

By exploring the group's website, I learned of a meeting scheduled for last night and held at the White Rock Church of Christ. Mrs. Peg and I decided to attend, because we're very concerned about crime in our neighborhood, particularly in the area just to the East of us, as in the other side of our fence.

It's not that we feel like we're in immediate danger on a day-to-day basis. We're really thinking ahead to the flipside of the double-edged sword that allowed us to get a much nicer house than we could have otherwise afforded. The reason we were able to get such a good deal is what's on the other side of our fence.

If one were to climb our back fence, they would find themselves faced with a small drainage creek and a heavily wooded burm that extends for roughly ten yards. They would then find a set of older condos (sketchy looking); then a set of apartments (sketchier); and then several more apartments (wouldn't want to hang around long enough to sketch). (The general sketchy area, as we learned last night, is called "Two Points," referring to the spot where Buckner Boulevard meets Peavy Road.)

This benefitted us on the front-end, as a comparable house just a half mile west of us sells for double what ours cost. However, knowing that there will most likely come a day when we'll want/need to move, we've got a stake in seeing the neighborhood improve, dragging our home value on its coattails. I also occasionally entertain a pipedream of sending future young Pegasi to our neighborhood elementary school, S.S. Connor.

So, we went to the meeting, which was, on the whole, an impressive affair. There was a crowd of about sixty folks, including organization staff and staff of schools in the area. We were all handed surveys and volunteer forms at a sign-in table, but quickly ushered to our seats as the meeting started promptly at 7:00.

Granted, we live in the Big City, but I expected a neighborhood association meeting to be a rinky-dink affair: lots of hemming and hawing, an aimless discussion, and maybe some pie. Quite to the contrary-- the whole thing was run with precision and professionalism. There were two (two!) professional facilitators whose job was to keep the whole thing on schedule. They started with a list of ground rules (be respectful, one person talk at a time, answer every question, etc.). They then provided a list of hoped-for outcomes, solicited input for more, and posted two-sheets: one to list action items; another to list "parked" questions to be researched or interesting, but not immediately actionable, pieces of information. I've seen publicly traded companies who could take a meeting-planning lesson from this bunch.

That's not to say that there wasn't a fair share of folksy fun for the missus and I to chuckle over: The IT volunteer urging everyone not to buy a computer if they hadn't already; the old coot who was concerned about a couple neighborhood association presidents who were agin' this thang; the old woman in the back who cried out for every speaker to stand; the new small neighborhood association president who had clearly practiced her impromptu speech in front of the mirror all day.

But largely because the meeting was so well-run, we learned lots. To whit:

• FRI is made up of a dozen or so neighborhoods, including ours. Most of them have cute names like "Highland Hills" and "Enclave at White Rock." Because we're on the edge of a subarea made up of apartments where some people think that selling drugs and raping people is more important than gathering to name subdivisions, we're referred to as "The 1177," based on our voting precinct. Allegedly, if you mention "The 1177" to any cop in the Northwest Division, he'll grimace.
• The Southwest area of FRI has been the beneficiary of a federal "Weed & Seed" grant for the past several years. That means that the Justice Department ponies up $250k a year to weed out crime (mostly by paying for police overtime) and seed development (presumably retail and higher-end residential.) The SW part has had great success weeding (crime down and flophouse apartments torn down) and has begun seeding (buying land to control use and building a recreation center to keep the kids off the street.
• The fear is that as that grant expires, if nothing is done about our portion, its crime will migrate and re-infiltrate the other half. Plus, my property values do bupkus.
• Our neighborhood has 40% more rape per capita than the city at large; 20% more assault and robbery and double the drug arrests.
• There's a warehouse building that is home to a producer of porn films within a half-mile of my front door.
• One's noble libertarian streak tends to go out the window when one is worried about his property values.
• Sgt. Rod Dillon of the DPD is a remarkably candid fellow and really knows his numbers.
• Those DPD cherry pickers you see guarding parking lots? Empty decoys. Usually they don't have the people to staff them.
• The DPD has no "storefront" stations, as they were banned due to budget cuts. That storefront station in your neighborhood? It's a "kiosk." Why is it a "kiosk?" Because it can't be a storefront. Shut up and be glad you have it.

The meeting ended promptly and cheerfully, even after an extended public remarks section.

A good thing, too. The 8:30 finish barely left me enough time to race over to GameStop to pick up my copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

---

If you've read this far, you: a.) realize that I need an editor and b.) probably wonder what all this has to do with Pegasus. Glad you asked.

First, you just got a small dose of how we envision news stories being reported. Sure, a real reporter wouldn't necessarily be covering his own neighborhood; the details would be more vivid (I wasn't going in planning to write on this); and an editor would have tightened it up. But there was voice and information, and no pretense at lack of bias, lack of stake, or anything resembling an inverted pyramid.

Second, and more important:

The "Two Points" area has 19,713 people; 15,672 families; 7,258 households. (Think about those numbers for a minute, particularly the relationship of the last two.)

There were roughly 60 people at this meeting. Now I expect that the folks living three families to an apartment have bigger worries than whether a neighborhood crime watch gets funded (or do they?). But the fifty-some single-family homeowners on my street have a very real stake. Counting myself and the missus, there were three of us in attendance. Apathy? I know my immediate neighbors, and my guess is no. Even the folks in attendance seemed baffled as to how they'd learned of the meeting: word of mouth, a flyer at the drug store, but not from the news. There's only one reason attendance wasn't better.

No one knew about the meeting or the group.

Other than myself (in attendance for my own selfish reasons), there were no members of the media present. And why should there be? Except for a couple nuggets about the cops, there's nothing in the preceding narrative that matters to the majority of folks in Dallas. So it doesn't get covered.

But to me and my neighbors, this is Big News. Matters much more than where the Cowboys are going to dump concrete or how many people came to watch the taping of The View.

A hyper-local news outlet would have covered it.

Come on you say-- surely the FRI folks will put this on their website. Yeah, they will. But you won't believe it, because it's spun from their staff folks. Good, sincere folks, but their job is to give you the party line. They won't call the old guy a coot; they'll gloss over the things that the cops said that weren't PC. And you won't be engaged. In the hands of a real reporter, the facts I've slopped on the screen above would be riveting reading for you if it were your neighborhood.

Not to mention, that if the FRI folks put it out there, you'd still have to know to look for it.

Maybe the neighborhood dry cleaner (who happened to be in attendance) could push an advertising special along with this story to her neighbors.

Maybe the woman who started this whole group, who struck me as someone who has quietly become a strong leader over a ten-year period, has an interesting story that would make a good profile, in the context of how the neighborhood has changed. Maybe someone could ask the cops what was up with the facial grimaces they made when certain businesses were brought up.

And maybe, just maybe, your neighborhood has a crime problem too, and your interest in neighborhood crime issues would cause a hyper-local news organization to push you that content.

The information I got last night was worth money to me-- If our neighborhood can turn around the way the area just west of us did, it's worth more than $100,000.

That's why the world needs a strong dose of Journalism 2.0.

Comments

[Spencer Michlin]

Congratulations on the new publication. I work with an organization called Foundation for Community Empowerment that helps fund and organize programs such as the Weed and Seed that you wrote about. I'd like to keep you informed about FCE and the activities of its various programs.

Could you please provide me with contact information?

Thanks,

Spencer Michlin
3814 Herschel Ave.
Dallas, TX 75219
(214)528-4024

[LantanaLinks.com]

I completely agree about the need for hyper-local news and information. Here in southern Denton County, TX, I am attempting to fill the void by offering exclusive local content to a fast growing residential area. I wish you luck in your new venture!

Regards,

Max Miller
LantanaLinks.com

[Libby]

Have you given up the Pegasus News? Why can't I find any recent posts?

[Peg]

Go to Pegasuysnews.com. We're right here! :)

[Joe Moraca]

I have the Sarasota Florida news online...
Sarasota Livin'

PS EPIC 2015 was stunning...

[curt]

This is mighty. I wonder what you're thinking in terms of how international/national news will fit into the Pegasus approach? G-d knows, these days more than any since I've been alive the global event has a local effect and vice versa. How will Pegasus deal with things like the London terror bombings? Allow/invite a DFW resident currently in London to write about the events with a local voice? Omit such coverage? Find the local connection? (If say a DFW company made the cameras in the tube stations write an article on that for instance?)

[curt]

This link (http://blog.pegasusnews.com/2004/11/wouldnt_it_be_n.html) is up and my question is answered there.