County office wants to dial into residents

Sarasota County’s Office of Neighborhood Services has half the staff it did during its peak of eight, but it’s doubling down on its efforts to reconnect with the community.

Jane Grogg, Miranda Lansdale and Kathlyn Clayton, the three-woman community team, is working on updating the community contacts database.

This list, available on the county’s website, identifies neighborhood associations, homeowners associations and other community groups, and it lists contact information for each. However, the list hasn’t been updated since 2007. Some of the contacts are outdated, and other groups aren’t listed.

Having the contact list is a good resource not just for their office, but for other county departments, too, Grogg, the office manager, said. They receive 10 to 12 requests a month for contacts from other departments, such as Planning Services.

The current directory has a map of neighborhoods and contacts for about 200 different condo, homeowners and neighborhood associations, but Lansdale said it is far from complete.

“We don’t know how many we’re missing,” Grogg said.

The office has contacts from master homeowners associations, but beneath these bigger organizations, there are sometimes smaller groups, and Grogg wants these contacts, too.

“The more we have, the better we can inform,” she said.

The Office of Neighborhood Services opened in 2003 as a new department of the county dedicated to connecting with residents on civic issues. It teaches a Civics 101 class for residents and manages the neighborhood grant program.

Grogg, Lansdale and Clayton are working to refocus the purpose of their office to be more proactive than reactionary. Grogg said word-of-mouth has been their best advertiser to get in contact with the community — residents or groups who have used the office and recommend it to others — but they want to reach out to a bigger audience. They’ve been attending some neighborhood and community meetings, including Siesta Key Association.

“Those most involved, they’re already interested and civically minded; they’ll reach out to anyone in the county,” Grogg said. It’s residents who aren’t as involved that the office wants to engage.”

A large number of residents don’t think about local government every day, Grogg said, but when something happens in their community that they care about, the Neighborhood Services Office wants to be easily available for them to contact. Grogg’s office even has its own Facebook page: facebook.com/neighborSRQ.

“It helps build our ongoing dialogue with the citizens we serve; it opens a line of communication,” Grogg said.