The Vance Organization to Implement Community Excellence will hold a public forum at 6 p.m. Monday at the Gateway Center on the effort to obtain official recognition for a federal Weed and Seed site in and around Henderson.
VOICE decided during its regular meeting Wednesday to hold the forum as a way to boost community involvement in the Weed and Seed application, which must be e-mailed to the Department of Justice by Oct. 30. VOICE, which is acting as the steering committee for the Weed and Seed project, aims to complete the paperwork by Oct. 1; the city-county group must submit a draft of the application to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh by Oct. 14, according to the deadlines established by the Justice Department’s Community Capacity Development Office.
“Obviously, there is much work in front of us, but we are ahead of the process in many respects,” Henderson City Manager Eric Williams, the VOICE chairman, wrote in an e-mail message to VOICE members after the meeting.
He added that the group “must further assess, survey and solicit input from residents, leaders and others residing within the affected area.”
Williams said he hopes that Monday’s forum will help VOICE create a description of the needs for weeding (driving out drugs and violent crime) and seeding (instituting programs that undermine the socioeconomic roots of crime) from the perspective of residents of the designated area. The zone runs through much of the eastern half of the city, extending beyond the city lines south of the former Harriet & Henderson Yarns complex in South Henderson and east of the North Henderson area that once served as a mill village.
Another goal of the forum is to bring forward volunteers for the Weed and Seed steering committee.
Police Lt. Perry Twisdale and Division of Youth Services official Donna Stearns, who attended a national Weed and Seed conference in Los Angeles in late August, are on a subcommittee with Team Vance leader Marolyn Rasheed, VOICE Treasurer Loree Adams, Lt. Irvin Robinson, Support Our Students coordinator Marsha Taylor-Denny, Downtown Development Commission Executive Director Sheri Jones and city Community Development Bock Grant specialist Gwen Wright to handle preparations for Monday’s forum.
“The group of volunteers that stepped forward is a creative and hard working bunch, so the forum is bound to be successful,” Williams wrote.
The forum is being held the same night as a Vance County Board of Education meeting at 7 and a Henderson City Council meeting at 7:30.