By LESLIE COLLINS
Northeast News
July 4, 2012

Indian Mound neighborhood is encouraging other neighborhoods to follow its lead and participate in the city’s Volunteer Inspector Program.

“I think it’s a really good way for residents to take ownership of their own neighborhood,” Indian Mound Neighborhood Association President Katie Greer said.

The Volunteer Inspector Program allows trained residents to take property code violations into their own hands by taking photographs of the violations and turning those in to the city’s Neighborhood and Community Services Department.

A number of resident’s complain that the city’s 3-1-1 Action Center doesn’t respond quickly enough to property codes violations, Greer said. Participating in the Volunteer Inspector Program provides an avenue to speed up the process, she said.

Last month alone, Greer and another neighborhood resident turned in violations on 90 properties in Indian Mound, she said.

Greer hopes that number will eventually dwindle if more residents participate in the program, staying on top of properties every month instead of surveying the neighborhood every few months.

“My idea is if we can get enough people to go through the (Volunteer Inspector Program) class and volunteer to do it, we can break up the neighborhood into doable chunks,” she said.

Asked why it’s important to stay abreast of property code violations, she said, “It goes back to my whole theory of crime and blight. If our neighborhood looks trashy or dirty, then people think, ‘Well, this is a place where people don’t care, so we can get away with whatever we want.’

“Trying to keep things neat and clean will help us deal with a lot of public safety issues as well.”

The Volunteer Inspector Program isn’t just for Indian Mound, she said. It’s a program that can benefit every neighborhood in Northeast.

To help Indian Mound and other Northeast neighborhoods, Greer has scheduled a volunteer inspector training session at 5:30 p.m. July 9 at the North-East Public Library, 6000 Wilson Rd. Residents will learn more about the program, as well as common property codes violations, inspector guidelines and how to report property code violations. Residents are asked to RSVP to Greer at president.imna@gmail.com. All are invited to attend.

“I just think it’s a good way to police ourselves and take care of our own problems,” Greer said. “It really does speed up the process a lot.”