STOCKTON — Though there
is a “significant need” to improve the quality of life on Stockton’s
beleaguered south side, overcoming the community’s long-standing challenges is
“not as simple as allocating additional resources or adopting new policies.”
So begins Stockton’s official
response to a report, released in May by the San Joaquin County Civil Grand
Jury, which is sharply critical of the city for its alleged long-term neglect
of the south side.
The eight-page grand jury
report was released May 13, with city officials declining comment at the time.
The city is legally required to respond by next week, and the council will
consider Stockton’s staff-produced six-page reply at tonight’s meeting.
In the document to be
discussed tonight, the city says it “has consistently dedicated resources and
staffing to address needs in South Stockton.”
The response continues,
“There are a multitude of complex factors that impact the quality of life of a
community. Everyone working together for South Stockton will in fact make
possible a change in the quality of life for this community.”
After reviewing the response,
two leaders active on the south side said they are hopeful Stockton is headed
toward meaningful change in a community that is home to one-third of the city’s
300,000 residents.
Both, however, were cautious
in their appraisals.
“I think the city is trying,”
Fred Sheil of Stockton’s STAND Affordable Housing said. “I’ve been in Stockton
since 1984, and I think this is the best chance all the neglected neighborhoods
have ever had.”
Hector Lara of the Reinvent
South Stockton Coalition added, “The city is trying. It’s not quite there yet,
but it keeps moving in this direction. They’ve opened the conversation, and
they’re starting to follow up with action.”
Sheil said city government,
until recently, rarely if ever has been as engaged as it is now at bringing
change to south Stockton, which has been beset by multigenerational
public-safety, educational, housing, employment and health issues.
In May, the City Council
approved spending $100,000 to hire a consultant to help Stockton begin to
implement a plan aimed at tackling the south side’s challenges. The plan already
had been drafted in an unsuccessful bid earlier this year for south Stockton to
be designated for special assistance as a federal Promise Zone.
Last week, in another step
toward remedying the community’s ills, the Stockton Police Department held a
community meeting to kick off a 90-day code enforcement and anti-crime effort
in a 35-block section of the south side. About 100 neighborhood residents
attended the meeting.
Sheil said a code-enforcement
crackdown in south Stockton and elsewhere in the city is long overdue, but that
past city councils were “very friendly to the concerns of slumlords and
absentee landlords.” Now, Sheil said, the so-called friendliness is gone, but
insufficient staffing in the city attorney’s office is an obstacle.
“I think there’s very strong
support for this in the city attorney’s office,” Sheil said. “There’s serious
interest in doing this.”
Sheil said he credits
Stockton’s recently exited bankruptcy with spurring the city to begin to
address its most severely festering wounds.
“In an odd way bankruptcy has
been good for the older neighborhoods, because now the city’s efforts have to
focus on the whole city,” Sheil said.
The civil grand jury’s May
report shone a spotlight on south Stockton’s “extensive blight, poverty,
deteriorating housing, slumlord residential ownership, and vacant lots, a lack
of neighborhood services, and widespread drug dealing and crime.”
It also urged city government
to take the lead role in reviving the long-downtrodden community.
“While many civil and religious
groups are working to make positive changes in that part of the city, only city
government has the resources, police powers and platform for communication to
effect real change,” the report said.
The city’s
still-to-be-approved response addresses 18 specific findings and sub-findings
of the grand jury. The response fully agrees with six, rejects four, and offers
mixed reactions to two. The city says it already has implemented
recommendations of the grand jury related to budgeting and code enforcement.
The response also declines
comment on some findings in the grand jury report because it says they are
based on “broad statements of public perception” or there is “insufficient
information.”
Lara said a large part of the
battle will be to alter a deeply embedded negative perception of south Stockton
that is held both by many who do not live there and even by some long-time
residents.
“It’s
important for not just the business community but for other residents and other
organizations to put aside the lens they’ve looked at south Stockton with and
have a new vision of what it can be in the future,” Lara said. “It is a leap of
faith. All of us are taking this leap of faith. We think (the city) gets it and
is trying.”
August 3, 2015
Stockton
Record
By Roger Phillips
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