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When community associations talk, the city listens

Want to see a mayor cower? A police department scurry? Planners swallow their blueprints? City councils topple, rebuild, then topple again?

Then go to a neighborhood meeting that teems with people, and steams with passion, goals - and maybe, a little anger.

Seriously. A community association that's attentive - and attended - is like having a Rottweiler in every yard. And even the big dogs of city politics - from elected officials to the bureaucrats who implement their decisions - tremble when the barking begins in the 'hood.

Oops, almost forgot. We rarely hear such sounds, because all too often, neighborhood associations don't have the sheer numbers, sheer bodies, that can make the powers that be wilt like a week-old corsage.

I went to to a community potluck this week, thrown by leaders of the Victory Hills and Clayton Heights neighborhood associations in southeast Albuquerque. Had a great time. Met nice people, said howdy to a City Council candidate, saw a police captain make the rounds, watched firemen devour the enchiladas and empanadas.

All in all, a fine evening. But a troubling one, too, because the non-neighborhood invitees, maybe 10 or 15 of us, nearly equaled the number of folks for whom the event was thrown.

It was illustrative of a scene that plays out a lot. Albuquerqueans love their homes, their neighborhoods, their city, in mostly that order. But they rarely can convert that good will into big deeds.

I can't help but think that city politics - particularly when it comes to high-protein issues like planning and police coverage - would be far different if neighborhoods grabbed hold of the loaded pistol that is strength in numbers.

Put another way: Does anyone seriously believe the mayor and City Council would spend so much time with their incessant nanny-nanny, boo-boo games if, say, 200 members of a neighborhood association came to One Civic Plaza loaded for bear?

"We've discovered it at the EPC (Environmental Planning Council)," agrees Clayton Heights Neighborhood Association President Isabel Cabrera. "When we've got 20, 30 people there, we get a lot done. But if there's two or three at every hearing, no."

At Victory Hills and Clayton Heights, a pair of older neighborhoods that straddle Yale Boulevard between Albuquerque International Sunport and the University of New Mexico campus, there are plenty of needs, all of them topped by a wish for economic development that would keep this pair of aging areas vibrant.

But getting help, they note, is rarely quick - or easy.

"The city's a big bureaucracy," says Victory Hills resident Juan Larrañaga, "and sometimes it's hard to get anything done."

In business, it's all about location, location, location. In politics, it's about volume, volume, volume. The more people you have, the louder they are, the quicker things move.

Case in point: After 12-year-old Natalie Mendoza was shot and killed in a gang-related drive-by this winter, members of the Tres Volcanes neighborhood devised a neighborhood watch plan. When the watch went up, crime went down.

But too often, it takes a tragedy - a shooting, a traffic disaster - before things change.

At Victory Hills and Clayton Heights, where grad-school newcomers wave hello to residents who remember when drive-in theater screens were the tallest structures in the area, there's no shortage of hope. And no shortage of energy, either - at least judging by the small cadre of true believers who organize the meetings and have no problem looking the cops and the suits in the eye.

Still, the unrealized potential is striking.

"I've been to a thousand homes in the campaign, and there's a tremendous amount of apathy," says Joanie Griffin, running for City Council in District 6. "I find so many people unaware, unconcerned, uninvolved."

Griffin makes an excellent point.

Then she makes a better one.

"Are you a member of your neighborhood association?" she asks me.

My answer: No.

Clearly, the bark, like charity, begins at home.