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AGENDA ITEM
TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND MEMBERS� OF THE CITY COUNCIL
FROM: RICK COLE, CITY MANAGERI,✓-s- -
DATE: OCTOBER 1st, 2001
SUBJECT: NEIGHBORHOOD IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY
RECOMMENDATION
It is recommended City Council authorize creation of a Neighborhood Improvement Team
coordinated by a Deputy to the City Manager for Neighborhood Improvement and initial
funding of up to $250,000 during FY 2001-02 for special projects.
BACKGROUND
Over the past three years, the City Council has given direction to pursue four priority themes:
Fiscal Stability, Community Development, Two-Way Communication and Strategic Vision.
Progress has been made in each of these areas, supporting new homes, new businesses and
new public investment. These successes have also strengthened community pride and City
organizational capacity ravaged during years of harsh cutbacks.
The Neighborhood Improvement Zone program has been an experiment for "improving all of
Azusa, one neighborhood at a time." The first two areas have helped us fine tune what works
best at building partnerships with neighbors and community institutions to coordinate
reinvestment of time, money and effort in older areas of the city. Congruent with this
program, our Police Department is embarking on a systematic commitment to community-
oriented policing, are augmenting our code enforcement staff and we are working with a wide
range of volunteer community efforts. Some of the models for these efforts are Operation
Clean Sweep (in the Sixth and Lime Street area); the anti-hate crime neighborhood response
meetings (near Lee School); the Citylinks partnership with APU in NIZ II; and the monthly
community clean-up efforts spearheaded by Councilmember Rocha.
These successes give us both a new urgency and a new opportunity to extend this model to
all of Azusa to achieve the following key goals:
• Improve the physical health, safety and appearance of the entire community
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