SAN ANTONIO – The City of San Antonio is trying to be a good neighbor by giving communities a clearer picture of what nuisance properties or problems are impacting each zip code.
The Office of Integrated Community Safety works by gathering data from all city services and calls to a neighborhood to take a closer look at issues that are unique to that area.
Maria Vargas Yates is the director; she’s been hosting a series of community meetings in areas that have seemed to have problems since last fall.
The Good Neighbor meetings provide residents with information, require feedback on whether the data is accurate, and help develop solutions.
“All these things that people don’t really feel like it’s not important enough to call 911. It’s important to call it in through 311. Because those little social disorders build up in these places, and then they become a larger issue, a larger public safety issue,” said Vargas-Yates.
Overgrown grass, sidewalks that need help, standing water, and graffiti are all examples she offered that can give her office a better sense of the scope of a larger problem.
There is a list of Good Neighbor meetings scheduled for the year so far, but Vargas-Yates would like to invite communities to call her to request specific data for their neighborhoods.
“What I’m doing right now is I’m going back to the same neighborhood to show them here’s what you told me. Here’s how you compare to the other places we talked to and here’s the overall trend, and here is what we’re going to do next with this information,” she said.
Here’s how to contact Vargas-Yates’ office: IntegratedCommunitySafetyOffice@sanantonio.gov