The key to any successful garden is twofold. It’s not enough to just plant the seeds; you must also pull out the weeds that threaten to choke off the growth you have worked so hard to cultivate.
For the past five years, the city has tended its garden along Main Street with the aid of a crime prevention program known as Weed and Seed. But for the next five years, it will turn its green thumbs northward, working to improve the quality of life in the city’s Northside.
Weed and Seed is a program of the federal Department of Justice, designed to revitalize communities and root out crime by putting money and resources simultaneously into law enforcement – “weeding” – and neighborhood improvement projects – “seeding.”
The City of Poughkeepsie began its second five-year eligibility period in June. However, this second round of Weed and Seed will look much different than the first, according to local officials involved with the program.
For the past five years, the Main Street corridor from the waterfront to White Street was the designated Weed and Seed target area. For the next five years, it will be Main Street east of White Street and the entire northside – an area that is much larger and more residential.
As a result, according to area Weed & Seed officials, there will be a shift in Weed & Seed funding away from economic development and physical improvements, and toward more community-oriented projects.
“It’s going to be more people-based. It’s going to be more service-based,” said Bernard “Butch” Wells, executive director of the Poughkeepsie Housing Authority (PHA) and a member of the Weed and Seed steering committee. “You’ll see a lot that’s got to do with the residents.”
Cities compete for grants
The local Weed and Seed hierarchy consists of a series of committees that make planning and programming decisions and then report to the steering committee. The steering committee, acting in concert with the city as its fiscal agent, then puts in an application for competitive federal grants.
According to the office of Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-Hurley), who announced the city’s eligibility status last month, Poughkeepsie’s Official Recognition status under Weed and Seed gives it a leg up in applying for various grants from participating federal agencies as well as access to dedicated Weed and Seed grant funds.
According to Wells, these grants are highly competitive and there is no guarantee the city will receive everything it asks for. He said the committees are beginning to assemble their budgets and put together a grant proposal, which is due by Sept. 15. In the first year of eligibility, he added, the city is eligible to receive up to about $150,000 through Weed and Seed, which would be divided evenly between law enforcement and neighborhood projects.
Much of the law enforcement money goes toward community policing endeavors in an effort to increase the police presence in a designated neighborhood and establish a good relationship between residents and police. On the community side, the focus is on fostering neighborhood pride and empowering residents with the tools to keep watch over themselves when confronting the criminal element.
“The Weed and Seed program is an outstanding example of the effectiveness we can achieve when we bring the community and police together to fight crime and improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods,” Hinchey said in a June 14 press release.
Because the Main Street corridor includes the city’s central business district, many Weed and Seed-funded projects in past years have been aimed at beautifying the downtown area, attracting businesses and fostering economic development as well as encouraging community involvement.
Recent examples include mural projects at the Luckey Platt building and some boarded-up houses along Cannon and North Hamilton streets, executed by students in summer and after-school programs at local agencies Mill Street Loft and the now-defunct Youth Resource Development Corporation (YRDC).
Those kinds of activities won’t be as prominent, Wells said this week, as the committees develop programs that focus more on engaging families and young people, and attracting businesses to the Northside that are willing to train their employees in valuable workplace skills.
“With this clientele, you have three or four different cultural neighborhoods,” he said, including the residential bases of the city’s black, West Indian and Hispanic communities.
New life at New Hope
One visible change will be Weed and Seed’s new local headquarters, the designated “Safe Haven” where committees meet and many activities are based.
For the past five years, that has been the Family Partnership Center on North Hamilton Street, a converted school that now houses offices for a number of different social service agencies. In the new Northside Weed and Seed, the Safe Haven will be the New Hope Community Center, operated by the PHA at its Smith Street housing complex.
Wells said the community center is in the process of springing back to life after years of inactivity, and the Weed and Seed presence will be a significant part of that.
New Hope underwent significant renovations about three years ago, Wells said, most notably with repairs to its basketball gym. However, those renovations coincided with the PHA’s loss of federal Public Housing Drug Elimination Program funding, meaning the PHA didn’t have the resources to staff its newly improved facility.
“It’s been offline for the last couple of years,” Wells said.
Currently the community center is home to a girls’ empowerment program that involves basketball and mentoring activities, Wells said. The Faith Assembly of God uses the center for its breakfast, lunch and Sunday school programming, he said, and Dutchess County BOCES operates a GED program in the center. A new mural is slated to go up in the center in August, and the PHA is set to open a non-perishable food bank there as well. It also contains a computer lab with high-speed Internet access.
“A lot of things are really starting to happen there,” Wells said.
Wells noted that many people don’t know the New Hope Community Center is open to all Northside residents, not just PHA tenants. All residents need to do is register with the center or join one of its programs.
The New Hope Community Center is located at 104 Hudson Ave., and can be reached at 452-9264.