By Mary Shelton

Despite temperatures that topped 100 degrees, hundreds of city residents congregated at California Baptist University on July 8 to attend the annual neighborhood conference.

All day, they attended workshops, visited exhibits and listened to a keynote address given by Jim Diers, the former director of neighborhoods in Seattle while fanning themselves with whatever was handy to ward off the intense heat.

"There is a thirst for community wherever I go, " Diers said, as he related success stories of neighbors coming together to improve their communities.

Diers said that city governments tended to treat residents who were actively involved in their communities as nuisances, rather than as assets. Cities also focused more on the problems within neighborhoods including crime and graffiti, rather than seeing the positive assets that every community had to work with. Community members also needed to work together to create change in their neighborhoods rather than rely on outside bureaucrats.

He gave many examples of how neighborhoods worked together to solve problems, or to create new projects including community centers and art work.

One of his earliest experiences involved a dangerous traffic intersection that created enough concern in nearby residents that they had organized so they could lobby the city for a traffic signal on that intersection. The city ignored them, and one day, a child was struck and killed while walking across the intersection. Diers said he called the Director of Engineering for the city and asked them how many more people would have to die before there would be a traffic signal installed.

"Two more," the director said, "We've got procedures for these things."

The neighbors decided that they would occupy the intersection. Hundreds of them appeared the next day and walked back and forth across the intersection, blocking traffic. While the cars were stopped, they would hand out fliers with information about the intersection and the need for a signal. Within one week, the city decided to install a traffic signal.

Diers said that the diversity of communities provided their strength and that rather than create organizations, active city residents should seek out those that already exist. It was also important to work on issues that are immediate, concrete and reachable. Work on small issues first, then allow them to expand and never do for the people what they can do for themselves.

"People who feel powerless need to see the results of action," Diers said.

The annual conference took place during a contentious year in Riverside where many residents felt like they were losing their power in terms of expressing their concerns at City Hall. By July, residents could no longer pull items from the consent calendar for separate discussion and they watched as the list of consent calendar items grew, while the number of items on the discussion calendar shrunk. In June, a conversation between Council member Steve Adams and Mayor Ron Loveridge was broadcast over cable television after a microphone was accidently switched on. In those comments, Adams had said, "We have to get rid of those people" and Loveridge had responded by saying, that they had done that.He had also said that former Mayor Terry Frizzel had lied during comments made on an earlier agenda item on the La Sierra area. On June 20, Adams said that Jennifer Vaughn-Blakely who chairs the Group had misrepresented the situation in her criticism of his comments and he refused to issue an apology for what he had said.

Still, the conference was well attended. After Diers spoke, people walked through the booths, which represented neighborhood associations from the University Area to the Northside and city and county departments. Boards and commissions were also represented including the Human Relations Commission and the Community Police Review Commission. People also attended two workshop sessions, which covered subjects from organizing neighborhoods, to learning the nuts and bolts of city government, or City Hall 101.

Riverside Fire Department engineer, John Peurifoy talked to a classroom filled with people, about the city's Crisis Emergency Response Team, a program set up to prepare citizens on how to respond to a natural disaster, terrorist attack or other crisis. The workshop highlighted a 20-hour training program that is taught over three days several times a year. Participants learn how to extinguish fires inside buildings, remove individuals trapped beneath debris and how to assess a person for injuries and triage. The graduates of the programs then form teams which will work together if a disaster or other emergency occurs.

Peurifoy led a demonstration on the proper way to put out a fire outside at the end of the workshop with a fire extinguisher. Several people who attended the workshop donned gloves and tried it themselves.

Riverside Police Department officer John Staurt gave a presentation on how to establish and run Neighborhood Watch programs. Start, who is currently assigned as a community policing trainer works both with Neighborhood Watch and other programs including Crime Free Mult-housing, Business Watch and a new program set up involving the city's parks.

"We work better and live better if we know each other," Start said.

One of the challenges of Neighborhood Watch programs was not necessarily starting them but keeping them going. Often, programs were created by residents concerned about a crisis in their neighborhood, but once the situation had been resolved, the programs became inactive. Strong community leadership, a feel of community and the ability to assess the unique needs of each neighborhood was necessary to keep the programs strong, as well as the success of neighbors building bonds with one another that were not crisis-related.

The department had recently started a Neighborhood Watch Academy, which was an eight-week course for city residents taught by both police officers and representatives of other city departments. The curriculum included instruction on crisis intervention, issues with the homeless population, home security and other topics.

Between the two workshops, neighborhood caucuses met to hold elections. The city has divided itself up into five areas, each which is represented on the Riverside Neighborhood Partnership board by three members and an alternate, each who serve three year terms. In order to be eligible to run for a position, an individual has to belong to a neighborhood organization that is registered with the city. Each caucus was assigned to a room with a designated color of balloons representing the different regions. Most people who attended the caucus session for the second region which includes the Eastside and the University Neighborhood had never attended a caucus before the conference. One of those individuals, a woman, won a spot on the board, after she said that she wanted to focus efforts on working with the homeless population.

The conference ended with prizes being raffled off, but many individuals felt that they left with the greatest prize which is learning measures to empower communties through neighborhood action in a city which is becoming increasingly more difficult for city residents to participate in their local government.