Stop Trying To Revitalize Neighborhoods Without the "Neighborhood" Input

On Thursday evening, something interesting happened in the city of Richmond. Well actually... probably many interesting things happened but we can not know about them with notification and repeated notification if you want the citizenship's participation.

In the convention center-which I might add that the facility is not rented for an event by simply wanting to use it, a meeting was held about "revitalizing the North Jackson Ward area". The announcement on the mid-day news did not say who was hosting the event. It was a cold sterile announcement.

One could say that it was an attempt to see who would show up without knowing the sponsors... so I can see that.

What I can not see is this announcement without any previous announcements so people who do more than one thing in a day can plan their schedules.

What I am inclined to believe is that this timely announcement is not a good strategy to show good faith about working with the citizens that "ALREADY" live in the North Jackson Ward area. I am almost certain that there are very few neighborhoods in this city where such cavalier and dismissive regard is DISPLAYED.

It is my hope that going forward from THIS day (June 19, 2010),that whatever collaboration, coalition, group, organization, city entity....WHOEVER.... will dig deep to re-tool this process.

It is worth bearing in mind that there are Section 3 requirements that HAVE NOT been implemented, CONSOLIDATED PLAN stipulations that might be out of sync, and just plan old rude and dis-respect behavior that has clouded this process of what to do with Downtown Richmond,North Jackson Ward,Gilpin Court or whatever "NEW" name that will be tried in order to avoid the negative word association with the NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR that have been directly associated with what may very well have started out as good intentions about uplifting and transforming the communities of our city.

Unfortunately, what we have now is something looking like GENERATIONAL NEGLECT and missed opportunities that have created extreme poverty resulting from policy gone haywire.

Avoidance and hasty actions with partial stakeholder participating can not be the answer any longer.

The reality of what must be done takes real work. IT CAN HAPPEN, but ARE we really ready to display the authentic RESPECT necessary to change hearts and minds positively in order to get the best work out of each of us in this city.

I contend that the meeting in the convention center last Thursday has got to do way more work in making the effort.