Neighborhood Organizations Form Around Shared Concerns

When the Latah Creek Neighborhood Council held its formative meeting last week, about 120 people were there. One was Ruth Dixon.

“Why the turnout?” asks Dixon, now a member of the newly formed organization. “Several valid reasons,” she replies, listing these three:

1. “Self-defense. The interests of the ‘neighborhoods’ are being taken over by bureaucracies (state Department of Transportation) and developers (many) and ‘planners’ who do not always consult with those same neighborhoods when they arbitrarily make plans which change their character.”

2. “Characteristics which are peculiarly that neighborhood’s mark, i.e. Latah Creek’s wetlands and the creek itself which need protection; the history of the area/neighborhood, etc., etc. These characteristics keep each neighborhood vital and real, as opposed to the sterile, all-one-block anonymity of most city streets.”

3. “A natural instinct of pride in what and where one has chosen to live and work. Many homeowners have spent time, energy, money in improving not only their own property but the neighborhood.”

He might agree with Dixon about the self-defense aspect of neighborhoods, but Jim Allen of Spokane doesn’t share her enthusiasm.

“Neighborhoods is a bad idea,” he said. “We are too small of a community to have most of our citizens neglected to second-class status by the more powerful neighborhood groups that really become lobbyists.”

Allen cited “the boondoggle carousel” built in Browne’s Addition’s Coeur d’Alene Park as an example.

“They had their heads stuck up the 19th century,” he said. “Meanwhile, the list of ‘good things’ to be done are limitless.”

Regardless of the issues, says Frank Yuse, interim chairman of Spokane’s Balboa neighborhood, neighborhoods should be “compact, identified by some symbol or structure, able to be traversed in less than one hour on foot and easily informed on the meetings and issues that are very important.”

He said the elementary and middle school attendance areas offer a natural framework for neighborhood boundaries, both because of the sense of attachment that surrounds them and the convenient meeting space they offer.