Nashville Mayor Karl Dean met with neighborhood groups from around the city at the Downtown Library over the weekend to hear about problems in their areas of town.
Many issues were related to prosecuting codes violations. Jerry Waering lives in the Priest Lake area. He’s had trouble in the past getting the Codes Department to cite violators but was excited to hear that the police department will be taking a role in codes enforcement.
“The police department has now been authorized to enforce codes and write codes violations. It’s early in the process and I think this is going to be a really good move. I’m going to go home and send an email out to everyone that’s involved in our neighborhood watch and tell them about because I think this is going to be a fabulous thing for neighborhoods.”
At the meeting, Codes director Terry Cobb said the police department began issuing its first building citations last week.
Mayor Dean has been holding other listening sessions with parents of Metro Schools students. He says these community meetings will ultimately lead to policy directives but won’t end there.
“We’re going to continue to be listening. I don’t think you listen for a couple of months and say, ‘well, I’m done listening.’ I mean I think I’m going to be listening for four years, I hope.”
Dean says he believes in the ability of neighborhoods to help address social issues such as crime and education. He hopes his Office of Neighborhoods will help coordinate the over-600-neighborhood and merchant associations.
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