The Tampa Way of Doing Good in the Hood

The City of Tampa is trying something new in an effort to stop neighborhoods from decaying.  Tampa Bay Online reported on Tuesday about a recently created program called "Operation WiN" - Working in Neighborhoods. This program involves a three-way partnership with the City of Tampa, the Salvation Army and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

The so that court ordered offenders perform community service work by cleaning up neighborhoods. The community service workers are supervised by city employees. Since community service work can happen on weekends or evenings, city employees have adjusted their work schedules to be flexible towards handling the supervision.

Neighborhood associations can contact the City of Tampa to identify foreclosed or abandoned homes and areas that need community service. Here is a good reason to have an active neighborhood association and one that has city contacts.  Community service labor is not a new idea. You can see offenders picking up trash and debris along road sides and throughways. Some communities even use this labor to clean up graffiti on public buildings and structures. What is unique here is that sometimes this labor works to clean up private property gone bad, and that benefits the neighborhood.

Apparently, Tampa leaders have realized that we are living in some strange and interesting times and are not afraid to try something new. If you believe in the "Broken Windows" theory then this is a city that is leading by example and working to turn things around. By making a small investment now the city management is telling its residents that blight and decay are not acceptable.  It will not be tolerated and it will be corrected. It doesn't take much for a neighborhood to turn bad. It starts with one house, then a few more, then a street and pretty soon there goes the neighborhood.

By having the foresight and proactive initiative to address and tackle a growing problem, Tampa leaders are demonstrating some unique and adaptive management techniques. This program is good for the neighborhood and good for the city.  Stabilizing a neighborhood, and using community service labor, keeps costs down and property values up. In the future Tampa will definitely reap the benefits of this investment.

Contact us to find out more about the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition. You can comment about this blog below or you can take this to our forum.

Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition