Town hall meeting a step forward in helping Florence

Residents of northwest Florence love God, their children, homes and neighbors. They hate guns, drugs, dilapidated buildings, insensitive police officers and dangerous living conditions.
In a refreshingly candid and passionate town hall meeting Thursday night, residents in the predominantly black community raised their hands and told Florence City Council members and Police Chief Anson Shells they are tired of living in the middle of squalor.
One by one, a mix of soft-spoken and boisterous advocates for a better life begged for someone, anyone, to pay attention to their plight.
The neighborhoods around the Northwest Park Community Center are filled with desperation. The cries for help come from people who have seen gang infestation rise and property values decline. With unemployment at its highest level since the Depression, many residents feel lucky to have minimum-wage job. Many young men have had brushes with the law and spent time in jail.
Despite advances in race relations and a community united, seemingly, in cleaning up the streets and clearing out bad elements, hardly anything positive seems to happen.
“You can’t get anything done unless you know somebody,” community volunteer and activist Eddie Faison Jr. said.
Now, at least, council members have met a cross-section of the community, thanks to a suggestion from Mayor Pro-Tem Billy D. Williams to have the full council visit with his constituents. The three-hour give-and-take session stayed on message and did not deteriorate into a ragefest.
We thought a series of ideas emerged as the foundation for a better understanding and progress.
Mary B. Grantham, a senior property manager for NEAL of Florence, offered to donate a house to the city to use as a police substation in the community. Grantham told residents about her inability to rent homes because of drug dealers in the area. A police substation would increase officers’ visibility and serve as a powerful deterrent to gang activity and crime.
Community leader Teresa Ervin pressed for action on abandoned houses and overgrown lots. The city has identified hundreds of abandoned properties, Councilman Ed Robinson said, and has started the process of demolishing 21 homes and clearing 14 vacant lots at a cost of more than $100,000. More than 400 properties have been inspected.
The process of eliminating eyesores is a sensitive one. Some residents only can afford to live in cheap housing, and the community wants to encourage home ownership.
“The problem is what to do after we identify a dilapidated home,” Ervin said. “Do we have to tear them down? Can they be revitalized and sold to a buyer?”
Education is the key to prosperity and breaking the cycle of poverty in Florence. Unfortunately, too many young people hit the streets, join gangs and wind up in jail as teenagers.
The solution to crime is confronting it on the streets. We support Shells and Mayor Stephen J. Wukela in the efforts to hire more police officers for gang enforcement.
We also have a better understanding of Robinson’s reluctance to bring more police in the community, even though we disagree with his conclusion about a police presence. Robinson says a jail sentence is like a death sentence to a young black man’s soul.
“Let’s spend less on police and more on prevention,” Robinson said. “I admit it’s bad. But we need to find out why we live in dilapidated homes and why so many people are in jail. Once they’re in jail, they’re messed up the rest of their lives.”
Florence is a city of 31,500. More than 45 percent of the population is black. Members of the black community feel ignored and find it difficult to break through with their voices.
The challenge is to embrace equality, eradicate racism and unify behind the concept of building a better place to live. Is it the job of Florence taxpayers to subsidize better housing and a better lifestyle in certain communities? Probably not.
But if hopelessness continues unattended, if gang activity increases unabashedly and if home ownership fails to take root unpretentiously, the problems will spike unquestionably.
The answers lie in more dialogue and the establishment of trust. Thursday’s town hall meeting was a huge leap of faith forward.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of this newspaper. Editorial Board members are Mark Laskowski (regional publisher), James Bennett (regional editor), Sam Bundy (sports editor), Kimberly Ginfrida (news editor), David Johnson (regional circulation director), Charles Tomlinson (Lake City News & Post editor) and Jackie Torok (metro editor).