By Ted Schnell • BocaJump
The Elgin Community Network is hoping the City Council on Wednesday will formalize what it already agreed to during its annual budget deliberations leading up to 2011: add another $20,000 to the organization’s funding for this year’s NeighborWorks events.
The City Council will consider an amendment to a March 23 purchase of service agreement with Elgin Community Network that would add $20,000 to the already-approved $20,420 to enhance the organization’s NeighborWorks events, which have been neighborhood improvement projects.
The NeighborWorks events have run the past three years, hosted by Neighborhood Housing Services of the Fox Valley. More recently, the organization has joined forces with the city, Elgin Community Network, the Northeast Neighborhood Association, or NENA, and Neighbors of South East Elgin, also known NOSEE.
“The plan is to do two of these a year,” Assistant City Manager Rick Kozal said Monday, adding one would be held in spring or early summer, a second in the fall, as was done last year.
Essentially, the events have involved more than 100 volunteers wielding paintbrushes and shovels to work in some of the city’s most at-risk neighborhoods to touch up paint, work on garden projects and make minor outdoor repairs to homes. The effort generally assists elderly, disabled and/or low-income homeowners.
The city also has incorporated into the effort its Chain Link Fence Removal Grant Program, in which homeowners with such fences are encouraged to participate. Volunteers then remove the fence, and the homeowner gets financial help replacing it with more appropriate style fencing.
The more recent efforts have targeted properties in the city’s northeast and southeast neighborhoods.
Last year, volunteers worked on 28 homes during two NeighborWorks events in which volunteers scraped and painted porches and fences, removed chain-link fences, trimmed trees and shrubs, and planted some new landscape materials.
The workdays also featured community lunches and games for the neighborhood residents and volunteers.
The success of the program last spring prompted Neighborhood Housing Services of the Fox Valley and Elgin Community Network to mount a second neighborhood cleanup, NeighborWorks II, in September. That effort targeted the Neighbors of South East Elgin neighborhood.
The participating organizations want to continue to have two NeighborWorks events each year – one in spring and one in fall – and to reach out to more homeowners with more extensive exterior repairs for those who are eligible, according to the city staff report to the council. That will require the purchase of building materials and professional carpentry skills beyond those of volunteers, which is why the group sought more city funding.
ECN is requesting the additional $20,000 from the city to expand the NeighborWorks event to include the purchase of needed materials and hiring of local trades people to make needed repairs for qualified homeowners. According to staff documentation, a committee representing NHS, ECN, the respective neighborhood association and the Elgin Code Department, would identify the homes.
The staff documentation states that committee can pinpoint homes most in need of assistance and that have the greatest potential adverse impact on the rest of the neighborhood. This investment is expected to help property values of surrounding homeowners and generally help stabilize the neighborhood.
