The issue: Cleaning up the community
Our stance: Significant progress is being made
Beautifying and cleaning up Shawnee will take a continuous effort on the part of both the public and private sectors of the community.
In June of this year, the city of Shawnee and the Greater Shawnee Chamber of Commerce joined forces and launched a campaign aimed at making our community more attractive and code compliant. In order to really put some teeth into the campaign though, the chamber realized this had to be a collaborative effort with the city.
We said then this campaign wasn’t intended to, nor has it taken away from all of the hard work and effort of Tom Terry and his chamber and city beautification committees. The intent has been to enhance what he and his groups have achieved over the past several years, and will continue to accomplish in the future by targeting some of the worst blighted areas.
Early this year, the chamber’s Small Business Council asked the city’s Community Development and Planning Director Justin Erickson what he needed help with in order to make the city more code compliant and business friendly as well. His response was assistance in providing a couple of brochures would be appreciated.
The Small Business Council, working with the Past Chairmen’s Council of the chamber, already has helped Erickson with one brochure. Members of the Past Chairmen’s Council, out of their own pockets, stepped up to provide funding for design of the two brochures.
The role of the Small Business Council was to provide the design work, which was and is being done. One brochure was completed by early summer and it focused on code compliance, and the city has utilized it to inform residences and businesses who are not compliant and also to allow a proactive approach to prevent violations.
The second brochure will be finished and ready to hand out at the Chamber Planning Retreat later this month. The city is paying for the printing costs of both brochures. But Erickson felt his staff didn’t have the design expertise, nor money in the budget, to have these prepared for printing.
Erickson recently pointed to these figures. They indicate the progress of the campaign, even though they reach back a couple of months before the joint effort began.
Regarding code compliance figures, he said since April of this year 761 junk/trash/debris complaints have been worked, along with 213 derelict vehicle complaints addressed. Another 421 tall grass and weeds, and 181 dilapidated building complaints also have been.
And, additional statistics show Operation Paintbrush has led to six downtown businesses and four houses being painted with additional applications being processed. Still, volunteers are needed who are willing to commit to painting a house, and more applicants who can do the painting themselves and just need the paint.
He said given the case load, “we will far exceed the 2,000 complaints that were processed in 2008.”
This is part of the collaborative effort systematically aimed at making a difference in the appearance of the community. While there is still a lot more to do, substantial progress is being made to clean up and beautify our community.
That is a significant achievement and it’s been possible because of the cooperation and willingness on the part of both the private and public sectors.
