7 minute read
COVER FEATURE
COVER FEATURE by B.C. Kowalski Neighborhood regrouping
Participation in neighborhood groups had been declining even before COVID-19 — now there’s a renewed effort to bring them back
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In a crowded Wausau Municipal Airport
lounge on a spring day in 2019, something rare happened for a Southeast Side neighborhood meeting: things got a little heated.
Th e group has some very strict rules to ensure that doesn’t typically happen. Meetings are held to exactly one hour, to ensure that no one feels like their time is being wasted. Guests can speak at the meetings but they must get permission beforehand, and it must directly involve the neighbors.
So that meeting, which was about the North Central Health Care expansion, was a rare exception. Th e meeting was formed to disseminate the facts about the project, since some folks in the neighborhood had gotten some early word about the revamp and started sharing some incorrect information around the community.
But one thing you couldn’t say about that meeting, or about most of the Southeast Side meetings up to that point, is that it was poorly attended. Meetings typically ranged from 25 to 40 people, one of the most robust of the city groups.
Attendance at neighborhood groups across the city had started to decline even prior to the emergency of COVID-19, but the pandemic really put a hamper on eff orts to keep residents informed about their neighborhoods. Out of 12 neighborhood groups prior to the pandemic, today there are only seven of them operating right now. And attendance has really dropped in a lot of the remaining groups.
Folks are hoping to change that, says Sue Nowak. Nowak was part of the eff ort to start neighborhood groups going back to the 90s. In 1992 the fi rst group, the Longfellow Neighborhood group, began as part of a project that chose Wausau among ten communities nationwide to launch neighborhood groups. Th e fi rst meetings were held at Lopnow’s Bar and arose out of concerns about alcoholism’s eff ects on the neighborhood. Johnson and Johnson funded the grant.
▲ A meeti ng in 2019 about the North Central Health Care expansion was one of the rare meeti ngs to get heated. Neighborhood meeti ngs on the Southeast Side are typically quiet aff airs, and held strictly to one hour.
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The current version of the groups, the Neighbor to Neighbor (or N2N), started in 2004 under Mayor Tipple. The police play a vital - but crucially, assistance only - role in the groups. Lt. Melinda Pauls says there is a community resource officer assigned to each neighborhood group who shares information about police activity in the neighborhood at the meetings and is a go-to resource for when there is a problem. Multiple drug houses have been shut down after police got tips from neighborhood groups, for instance. City Pages has reported on some of them over the years.
It’s also a good way to disseminate information, Pauls says. The groups are a good place to share information about scams residents should be aware of, something that might not have the same reach in other areas.
Challenges
COVID-19 did more than anything to put a hamper on the efforts to keep the groups going. Some shifted to outdoor spaces, such as the Westies neighborhood group. The problem is that when winter comes, being outside is far less appealing. Some of them just never got going again.
And, group leaders are aware of the challenges of generational differences. Audiences at meetings are tending to be comprised of the more elderly residents of neighborhoods, and that they need to do more to reach new generations who might be too busy to attend an in-person meeting, or simply would rather interact digitally.
Lisa Shilts, a member of the Southeast Side Neighborhood group, says her goal is to involve younger families. That might not necessarily mean attending a meeting. Shilts says social media offers an opportunity for those younger neighbors to reach out with ideas that the group can take up at its meetings.
Also, Shilts says, they’re looking at doing some new marketing pushes, including hiring on a young marketer more in touch with ways to reach younger audiences.
The Police Department is on board with that too. Pauls told City Pages the department is planning to create a series of videos about the various neighborhood groups, employing the newly hired videographer/photographer to create those videos. “There is a lot going on in each neighborhood,” Pauls says. “And you don’t necessarily have to live in the neighborhood to attend a meeting.” Someone looking to buy a house or rent in a neighborhood might want to attend, for instance.
They’re also planning to send out surveys to find out what residents in various neighborhoods would like to see out of the groups.
Starting a new group
Part of the effort to repopulate the groups is to actually start newer ones focused on smaller, tighter-knit neighborhoods. Jennifer Gabriel spent plenty of time with the Westies group, which crosses three aldermanic districts in the area south of Bridge Street.
Starting in January, Gabriel is helping launch a new neighborhood group, which covers exactly the area of Wausau Ward 20. Gabriel chose that, she says, because it is the area around Grant Elementary, which shares a lot of common interests, is a smaller area with only one alderman (currently Sarah Watson) and can share a more focused agenda for the group.
Gabriel lays out her vision for the group, which follows a word several people mention in their interviews with City Pages: grassroots. Gabriel specifically says a lot of how the meetings take shape will depend on who attends them and what they want to see from such a meeting. One thing she definitely doesn’t care to see: she’d prefer it doesn’t become an extended City council meeting. Some groups have gone down that path, but the idea is to keep the groups focused on neighborhood issues, not rehashing city council debates.
In fact, that’s something that’s an important aspect to the groups. The city supports them by providing information about the groups on its website, and city council members or other city officials might be invited to speak at them, but they’re not run by the city, or the police department. They very pointedly run independently of the city, and their leaders set their own agenda.
Some officials have held their own neighborhood meetings in their district. City council member Pat Peckham and Mayor Katie Rosenberg,when she was the county board member for District 1, held joint meetings to help inform residents about what was going on in their district. Others such as Tom Kilian began holding meetings on specific issues; in Kilian’s case, one meeting in particular dealt with a housing issue on Thomas Street.
Those aren’t connected with the neighborhood groups, but they share a similar sentiment: meeting residents one on one, to share information and answer questions better than could be done over a newsletter or Facebook group.
Rebuilding
Leaders of the groups also meet every so often to share information about the groups, and happen to be doing so this Saturday. Getting the groups going again is a major topic the group has been dealing with.
Pauls says attendance was declining even before COVID, but the pandemic really took its toll on neighborhood groups, and the major topic of the Saturday meetings is how to get things back on track.
Organizers hope that a renewed effort in marketing, efforts to reach younger residents and some tighter-knit, smaller groups covering less geography will help restore them back to their former glory.
GET THE BALL ROLLING
Are you looking to start a neighborhood group? Call Lt. Melinda Pauls at 715-261-7800 and ask for Lt. Pauls.
