Report: Town hall meeting Ward 3

Local, Norfolk, Politics 2 Minutes

I attended the second in the series of six town hall meetings being held around Norfolk over the next few weeks. This one was for the residents of Ward 3, although the meetings are open to the public. Several attendees, including myself, live in other wards of the city.

The meeting opened with a welcome by Mayor Paul Fraim. Also in attendance were Ward 3 councilman Anthony Burfoot and superward councilwoman Daun Hester. I also saw a number of other city officials, including City Manager Regina Williams. There were some 120 people there, outside of the city officials and city-supplied facilitators and observers.

The attendees were broken into ten groups, each charged with addressing three questions:

As you look at our City overall and at your Ward specifically, as places to work and/or live and raise a family…

  1. What are you positive about? What makes you pleased to be here?
  2. What needs improvement or causes you concern?
  3. As a group, please select your top 3-5 priority areas for improvement.

Each group selected a spokesperson to report to the entire body at the end the group’s answers to questions 1 and 3. Some of the positives:

  • Downtown development
  • Diversity
  • Access to higher education
  • Cultural amenities

Some of the negatives:

  • Crime, including gang activity
  • Recreation facilities. This is a hot-button issue with the Norview Rec Center being delayed. Some of the groups thought that the youth crime is directly related to the lack of recreation facilities throughout the area.
  • Lack of afforable housing
  • Infrastructure (streets, sewers)
  • Unequal allocation of resources (money spent downtown, EOV as opposed to in Ward 3)

Although both the library supporters and the Norfolk Tea Party II had representatives at the entrance to the meeting handing out information, only a couple of the groups mentioned more funding for libraries and a reduction in real estate taxes as amoung their top priorities.

It will be interesting to see what the citizens in other wards say are their priorities. Time permitting, I will be attending the remaining meetings:

  • 10/25 – Ward 1 – Titustown Rec Center
  • 11/01 – Ward 5 – Bayview Rec Center
  • 11/08 – Ward 4 – Campostella Elementary School
  • 11/29 – Downtown – Marriot Hotel

Registration starts at 6:30 pm. The meetings are from 7-9 pm.

According to the announcement at the beginning, all of these meetings are being recorded and they will be posted on the city’s website. The city also plans a follow-up meeting, after all of these have been completed.

Let’s hope that it doesn’t take the city another 10 years to do the follow-up meeting. (It’s been 10 years since the first “Neighbors All” meeting.)

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