By Andy Ross The Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team held an open house for residents who are interested in becoming more involved in their neighborhood community.
The event, held in the City Hall Police sub-station in September, drew over 25 interested residents. Among those on hand to meet residents were Lt. Rebecca Sweeney-Burns (pictured) the newly appointed Downtown and Wooster Square district police manager — and longtime Wooster Square neighborhood beat policeman Officer Peter Krause. Also participating were Ken Gleasman and Douglas Hausladen (at right in photo below), Chair and Vice Chair of the management team and team board members Andy Ross, Ed Anderson and Brett Flamm.
The team holds an open general meeting each third Tuesday of every month on the second floor of City Hall at 6 pm. These meetings help promote a small town feeling and involvement on the part of residents and City officials.
Routinely on the agenda is the presiding Police District Manager who reports on what is happening in the neighborhoods regarding crime and other police activities, and one of three Alderman — either Bitsy Clark who represents the Downtown area, Michael Smart representing Wooster Square, or newly elected Michael Jones representing the Yale University portion of downtown — bring the members up to speed on what is happening in City Hall or other quality of life news relevant to the area. Winfield Davis, the Director of Operations for the Town Green Special Services District, also regularly updates team members.
Ken Gleasman (at left in photo) is a downtown resident and has served as Chairman of the group for the past two years. According to Ken the group is not afraid to tackle hot topics like the mayhem in the city streets when the bars and clubs close, and the recent rash of violent crimes in Wooster Square. The team also aided Karri Brady as she and dozens of other neighbors revitalized the Wooster Square Block Watch. The team recently launched a new web-based forum for online discussions regarding neighborhood concerns and updates.
Last September the group held a public forum at the Omni Hotel downtown with a panel of city leaders, community organizers, and representatives of the police department to address an audience of more than 150 interested residents and stakeholders. The central topic was the area’s quality of life; as a result of that meeting the first city-wide community management team quality of life survey is currently being designed with a scheduled distribution date of early 2010.
There are now 12 management teams throughout New Haven, which were initiated back in the early 1990s as part of a citywide effort, improve community policing. Community Management Teams (CMT) are organized in each of New Haven’s community policing districts, with some districts have more than one CMT due to the geographic size of the district. The teams also help residents have a voice in neighborhood improvement and revitalization efforts and are an important link to the police and to other city and social service agencies.
Anyone with an interest in the safety and quality of life in their Community Policing District should attend — including Block Watch members, residents, business owners, agency representatives, and local government and community leaders. If you know of anyone in the area who might be interested in attending these meetings please feel free to share this invitation. This is an opportunity for you to have a voice and to help set the agenda for the future.
For more information on getting involved in the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management team or any other Management Team in New Haven please contact Andy Ross at andy@andyrossgroup.com or 203 – 641-4666. http://groups.google.com/group/DWSCMT
dwscmt@gmail.com