Progress 2014
Page 6E, Johnson City Press
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Grant brought groups together to target crime in Johnson City By BECKY CAMPBELL Senior Reporter bcampbell@johnsoncitypress.com
A three-year community crime reduction grant funded by a state grant is well on its way to providing services that range from crime prevention and mentoring for elementary age kids and teens to recidivism reduction services for people on probation. Johnson City received the $800,000 grant — Targeted Community Crime Reduction Project — administered through the police department, in April 2013. Johnson City was the seventh medium-sized city in the state to receive the grant, according to TCCRP Director Becky Haas. The targeted area includes Mountain Home and downtown Johnson City. Planning for the grant began a year prior and was no easy task considering all the agencies that partnered with the police department. “In 2012 ... the Johnson City Police Department undertook an extensive data driven planning process,” Haas said. The department reviewed crime data collected from 20072012 pertaining to drug-related and violent crimes occurring within Johnson City. After comparing city-wide with the proposed target area, it was determined that the Mountain Home/ downtown areas were the best candidate sites for applying the TCCRP strategy, she said. “The TCCRP design consists of taking a collaborative problemsolving approach, first, by determining local agencies that might be interested stakeholders in identifying solutions to the challenges faced in the community. Then, by brainstorming together,
SRO Continued from Page 5E principal, school counselor, and teachers with any problems they may have during the day, he said. “They don’t get involved with school discipline, but they will assist the staff if they have a physically unruly student,” Smith said. City SROs also act as a liaison between the school system and juvenile court and periodically have a classroom presence when they teach on certain topics like teenage driving, drug activity and bullying. Smith said SROs have the opportunity to be a positive influence in a young student’s life. “(Students) see them at a younger age in a positive light,” which can help later in life, he said. “If you see (officers) early in a positive and helpful influence, then that relationship, hopefully, continues on in their adult life ... in elementary schools, they know it’s someone they can trust,” Street said. Funding SROs isn’t cheap, but the payoff is priceless, officials said. In the city, the salary budget for the 10 SROs runs around $400,000 a year. Then there is the cost of a police car and equipment. Even with the cost, “we think it more than pays for itself,” Smith said. “What you have to look at is the unknown factors of safety and what you may be preventing at that school. They handle a lot of situation that, if they weren’t there, a patrol unit would have to respond to it. The prevention, the safety, the relationships they make with the students and parents .... overall, most parents would tell you that just knowing a police officer is there, in today’s environment, it makes me feel better.”
these agencies plan and finally implement these interventions into the target area,” Haas said. “In Johnson City, the strategies centered around four interventions: pre-enforcement, enforcement, neighborhood revitalization and offender intervention.” A pre-enforcement program, Postive Action, is “an evidencebased curriculum for the local alternative high school program,” Haas said. “During the planning phase, it was determined that Positive Action would be provided as an after school program. As planning meetings continued, the opportunity arose to implement the program school-wide, making the alternative school the first high school in Tennessee to use the curriculum this extensively.” Goals in the program included reducing absences so students would be in the classroom more. “Since implementing Positive Action last August, the number of absences has been reduced by 15.8 percent,” she said. “Initial data suggests Positive Action has had a beneficial effect ... Also during this time, it was noted that last school year students received in-school or out-of-school discipline at a rate of two incidents per child compared to this year, in which students have received in-school or out-of-school discipline at a rate of only 1.6 incidents per child.” Also part of the pre-enforcement phase is Police And Teens Reaching Opportunities Together, or PATROL, which is a mentoring program for at-risk youth ages 9 to 16 who live in the Carver and Dunbar communities. “It encourages the children to set and achieve meaningful goals as well as assists young people in identifying personal talents, strengths and abilities, and works to rein-
force the positive application of these resources,” Haas said. In neighborhood revitalization, some projects are under way but others include home rehabilitation, cleaning up abandoned areas and a storefront art project. And last is the Day Reporting Center. “The mother lode of collaboration came when tackling the problem of reducing recidivism and designing an offender intervention strategy,” Haas said. “Once the targeted areas were defined, corrections agencies provided data to the police department that revealed 10 percent of residents living in these high crime areas were currently on probation or parole for crimes committed.” “As stakeholders met representing corrections agencies, members of law enforcement, mental health professionals and local judges, the idea was developed for creating a ‘one stop shop’ program for felony offenders that would address the individual’s criminogenic needs.” In June 2013, the Day Reporting Center opened to provide the community with a gender specific, high intensity, three-phase program where clients are court ordered to attend as an alternative to prison. The program provides job readiness training, parenting and relationship skills counseling and assistance with financial recovery. “The successful impact now being achieved by the Targeted Community Crime Reduction Project in Johnson City is largely due to resources that were not far away from the very areas with the greatest challenges. All it took was a vision, perseverance and getting stakeholders to the table to talk,” Haas said.
Tweetsie Continued from Page 5E decision was made was the plan to buy the Internet domain name www.tweetsietrail.com for around $1,500. Steep as it might have seemed, Marcus Ledbetter, the man tasked with building and designing the trail’s official website, said it would be worth it in the long run, since they would basically be building a brand name for the area. That brand name could immensely benefit local small businesses now and in the future. Initial plans were for Johnson City crews to start clearing the trail after the beginning of the year. True to task force projections, though, Johnson City’s Phil Pindzola led the clearing a few days ahead of schedule. At a recent announcement of a $25,000 donation from the Up & At ‘Em Johnson City Turkey Trot, task force chairman Dr. Dan Schumaier said six miles of the trail were already
cleared. After clearing will come the construction of benches, laying of crushed stone and work on bridges, railings and mile markers. With the website up and running, monetary contributions will begin to be the biggest issue in the upcoming months. Schumaier has confidently said that the project is well on pace to raise the necessary funding to complete all phases of construction within a few years. Schumaier’s team is currently working to link capabilities to the website where Internet users may direct donations to the project through PayPal. Donation mailers and efforts from the group’s members to target local business owners and citizens should also bring in extra money. The trail’s success in the past year could also reflect the success of the task force, that, Schumaier says, has been extremely competent in bringing the project together.
The City of Johnson City The City of Johnson City exhibited extensive growth in multiple public service divisions in 2013. As a government entity, the City of Johnson City saw both the initiation and the completion of several projects devised for the betterment of the city for its citizens. During 2013, the City of Johnson City developed a master plan and began construction of the Tweetsie Trail, a “Rails-to-Trails” project to connect the cities of Johnson City and Elizabethton. The City also began construction of Founder’s Park. In addition, enhancements were made to the City of Johnson City’s downtown streetscape in 2013. The City also completed Transit technology implementation to include text services and Google Transit Trip Planning. The City of Johnson City has grand plans
for 2014. The public service entity highly anticipates the continuation of growth and completion of city projects started in previous years. In 2014, the City of Johnson City will open Founder’s Park. The City also plans to open the first phase of the Tweetsie Trail. The City of Johnson City was founded in 1869. Principal officers are Pete Peterson, City Manager; Ralph Van Brocklin, Mayor; Clayton Stout, Vice Mayor; Jeff Banyas, Commissioner; Jenny Brock, Commissioner; David Tomita, Commissioner. The City of Johnson City employed approximately 900 people in 2013. 601 E. Main St., Johnson City, 37601 (423) 434-6249 www.johnsoncitytn.gov
City of Johnson City Serving You Today...Creating Opportunities for Tomorrow
Visit us 24 hours a day at www.johnsoncitytn.gov
Contributed
Front (top) and back drawings of the new Jonesborough Senior Center
New senior center rising in Jonesborough By SUE GUINN LEGG Press Staff Writer slegg@johnsoncitypress.com
Construction of Jonesborough’s new $2.3 million senior center at East Main Street at Longview Drive got under way in late November and is expected to be complete by the end of this year. In discussion since the 1990s, the new center will provide more than 13,000 square feet of finished programming space, or four to five times more than that available at the town’s existing senior center at Persimmon Ridge Park. At the long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony that marked the start of the construction, Mayor Kelly Wolfe called the project an investment in Jonesborough’s citizens and quality of life. The ground breaking was held Nov. 28, immediately following state approval of a final set of revised designs that trimmed more than $2 million from the costs of the building construction. The scaled-back design eliminated a commercial kitchen and about 75 percent of the space on the lower level of the two-story structure designed by Ken Ross Architects in 2012. The revised plans also will leave the lower level unfinished for completion at a later date. Amenities included in the final designs include a multiuse dining room that will also be used for dances, meetings and presentations; exercise, craft and game rooms; a computer lab; a parlor; a lobby and
administrative offices. Aesthetic features initially removed and later restored to the plans enhance the building’s appearance include a metal roof, upper-level balconies and decorative brick work above the center’s windows. Anxious to the get the construction under way, the town instructed Rainey Construction to begin excavation of the site in early September, immediately following the Board of Mayor and Adlermen’s approval of the revised designs. Alderman Homer G’Fellers noted at that time the project had been some two decades in the making with discussions of the need for a new center dating back to the 1990s. But with the snow and record-setting cold temperatures that occurred through much of December and
January, the project got off to a painfully slow start. In early January, with little more than an elevator pad in place at the construction site, the town’s building inspector Jay Green was brought on board to help oversee the stepby-step permitting process and speed the construction along. With the anticipated arrival of warmer weather, Browning said the building was expected to be well out of the ground by the end of March. Wolfe has assured the Senior Center Committee members the unfinished space on the lower level of the building will leave ample room for future expansion and the addition of a kitchen will be a priority. The mayor has also noted Washington County has agreed to contribute $500,000 to the project after the construction is substantially complete.
Bays Media In the early 1940s, N.M. Bays Sr. began the process of learning to build and repair radios. He took this knowledge and began his own business called Bays Radio in a small building beside his home in 1944. With the emergence of television in the 50s he set up and repaired some of the first televisions in area homes. Soon, Bays Radio & TV was established and became an official dealer of Zenith, RCA, and Sony. Over the years the business has diversified. They have sold not only radios and televisions, but also appliances and satellite dishes and done repair work on them all! As time passed, the small family-owned retail business had to change with the advent of big box retailers in the early 80s. Today, we are called Bays Media! We provide reliable and high quality post production services in the East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Western North Carolina area. We can take your old 8mm film and slides and convert them to DVD format. We can also convert video tapes including VHS, 8mm, Mini DV, and Beta to DVD. Tapes, film, and slides all deteriorate
with age and need to be transferred to DVD format to pass on to future generations. We can also restore old photographs that are torn or discolored and get them looking ready for the mantel again. If you need a large number of DVD or CD copies, we can do that as well. We even have rental equipment for your business presentations. And if you’re looking for someone to produce your commercials or assist you in producing your own DVD for your business, look no further than Bays Media. Whatever your media need is, give the qualified employees at Bays Media a call. We can assist you to bridge the growing technological gap. This year we are celebrating 70 years in business. We’d like to say a big “thank you” to all of our customers both past and present for supporting our family business. We look forward to helping you with your media needs! 1011 N. Roan Street, Johnson City, TN 423-929-2171