The Royal Oak Crime Prevention Council will soon become the Community Engagement Board with an emphasis on events in the city.
Ted Page, chair of the prevention council, said the change will come when officers are elected to the Community Engagement Board this month.
The crime prevention group was originally formed years ago to promote neighborhood watch groups. That’s no longer the case.
“Since 2012, at least, the big emphasis has been on events,” Page said. “Instead of a neighborhood watch, what we want are people who are watching. The best watchers are people who walk their dogs.”
The Community Engagement Board will include six residents and a city commissioner, as before. But Judy Davids, the city’s community engagement specialist, will join the group as a non-voting member. A police officer typically attends the group’s monthly meetings, which are held at the city police station the first Tuesday of each month.
“The city will be more involved and the police department will continue to be involved,” Page said.
He added that the change will require the new board to consider what the city manager’s office is looking for as well as the police department. In the past, Page said, the Crime Prevention Council was sometimes doing events that conflicted with city happenings.
“Our focus will be a little more broad,” Davids said, adding that the prevention council used to chiefly focus on safety events. “But we will focus on all events in the city. Specifically, we want to encourage residents to form neighborhood groups and consider having neighborhood events.”
Former crime prevention events will soon become events held throughout the city, Davids said. The new group will continue to do all of the things the Crime Prevention Council did.
“But with community engagement we will have events more specific to neighborhoods,” Davids said.
There are about 20 neighborhood associations in Royal Oak. Page heads the Royal Oak Beverly Hills Improvement Association, which includes 940 homes between 13 Mile and 14 Mile Roads.
“A strong neighborhood association is a strong neighborhood,” Page said, adding the association he heads has a Halloween parade, ice cream social events, food truck events and does an annual spring cleanup at the five public parks in its area.
Davids said 18 of the 20 neighborhood associations responded to surveys late last year. She expected them to have several key concerns in common.
But that wasn’t the case.
“Each neighborhood is unique in its challenges and opportunities,” Davids said. “Only 30 to 40 percent host activities in their specific areas.”
The range of concerns among the neighborhood associations was broad. Some wanted the city to tell them more about everything from bike lane usage and rodents to property maintenance codes, zoning, to nuisance issues such as open burning, loud noise complaints, and trash in parks.
“Those kinds of things seemed to be of more interest to them than just crime,” Davids said. “We have low crime rates and Royal Oak is a safe city.”
Among upcoming events the Community Engagement Board is overseeing are a visit from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a law and order event with a tour of the Royal Oak 44th District Court and police station, and a citywide block party in June.
The Community Engagement Board next meets at 6 p.m. Feb. 6 at the police station.