I talked about neighborhoods a lot during last year's campaign. I told people that I wanted to concentrate more city effort toward neighborhoods. I've looked very good on that issue because the staff, led from the Planning Dept with high participation across all departments, had the same ideas and were well advanced preparing to address the same issue. A click on "Neighborhoods" in the Categories to the right will bring up the multiple postings on neighborhoods.

We need to be concerned. About two-thirds of the city's property tax base comes from residential sections. Last year this sector saw almost zero increase in value. The last projection I saw for this year was only 0.6%. Factoring inflation into the consideration, our citywide residential areas are steadily losing value. We will soon reach build-out when no room is left to expand and to add new value. It will be very difficult to grow the industrial and commercial sector of the pie, one-third of the base, to offset residential decline and to add extra value that will provide salaries, parks, libraries, and public safety—while a declining residential base is requiring more resources and infrastructure.

The only counter strategy that I can conceive is to grow the value of our neighborhoods. There are many components to that effort. Maintaining infrastructure is, of course, important. But more importantly is maintaining an atmosphere where people want to and are confident enough to invest in their properties and will attract investment by others. That means maintaining and growing a sense of community, where people know and trust their neighbors, where there is pride in the community, and where residents feel their investments will be rewarded.

Garland's program on Vital Neighborhoods is the first step to that goal. It has now been a year since the staff presented their concepts to the Council and have concluded working with their first four pilot neighborhoods. Staff members, enough to fill the room, were present at Monday's work session to give their first progress report to the Council.

I hope you will take a little time to watch and listen to their presentation. It is available on the city's CGTV website and can be accessed most easily by following the links below. It is well worth the time to become more familiar with this program and to understand its importance for our future.

Part 1	Part 2

As I have emphasized recently in various forums, I have found no template for us to follow. We are inventing the wheel. Cities living in the Vital Neighborhood darkness will come to Garland to learn our methods. I've mentioned to some staff members to be thinking about "writing the book," because none exists. We, our whole community, are the leaders. We will make some mistakes and we'll be slow to follow some promising courses, but we will invent new opportunities and we will succeed.

I am hoping over the next year to take the lessons from this year and greatly expand our toolbox that neighborhoods can use for their own improvement.

This is a theme that I will return to over and over while I'm in office. Failure is not an option.