Bo Turbeville

Bo Turbeville, chairman of what was called the Weed & Seed program out of the U.S. Dept. of Justice, says the name has been changed and more money has been included in the grants programs to help communities with problems with crime.

The Weed & Seed program has been successful in Lehigh for the last few years, Turbeville said.

“It has brought people together in the amount of cleanups of different communities and that is good. I think in the last few years we have had more than 500 people now who have worked together in the Weed & Seed initiative,” Turbeville told a group of Chamber members last week.

Turbeville is chairman of the steering committee of the initiative that is now looking for a new name, from a local standpoint. He said it may become known as the Lehigh Acres Community Initiative or something like Lehigh Acres Cares.

“But what is changed is that we may be eligible for more money in grants to help our community. I think there is $40 million now available to communities that need help,” he said.

In his update, he said Weed & Seed was an initiative that brought people together in Lehigh to pitch in and help each other clean up areas in designated areas where serious crimes have been reported.

The original Weed & Seed area, Turbeville said, was located from Lee Blvd. to Delaware to Leeland Heights to Richmond to Homestead Rd. and an area on Alabama Rd. to SR82. He said these areas had been pinpointed by the Sheriff’s Office as the places where more serious crimes took place and needed attention from the community in addition to help from law enforcement.

“Like I said, the availability of grants in the new Justice Dept. program has jumped from $20 million to $40 million. That will allow us hopefully to ask for more money to help our community,” he said.

“When we became involved in the Weed & Seed, we were really at the end of it and we did not get any funds allocated to us, but now with the new program, that may change and we are going to try to get funding to help ‘seed’ our community,” he said.

The weeding out part of the program was just that cleaning up the neighborhoods in Lehigh where crime thrived.

Turbeville said with the new Justice Dept. program, they can go outside the strict borders that had been laid down before by the Sheriff’s office as to where most of the serious crime was in Lehigh.

Money that may come from the new federal initiative would be set for Lehigh Acres for such areas as parole and probation to add more deputies to the Bravo District and information helping up to stop vacant property crime.

“That would be a big help here in Lehigh with all the empty homes,” he said.

And there is funding for more resources for victims assistance, helping people cope with a bad situation if they are victimized, he said.

The new program also gives the community the ability to apply for more grants to help in other areas.

“But the real thing here has been the partnership, the volunteers, the business people who have helped us and FGCU which in the beginning did a survey for us,” he said.

There are different subcommittees made up in the new federal initiative, not unlike those when it was officially the Weed & Seed program.

One of those is the law enforcement sub committee, which works at weeding out the problems.

He said the Lee County Commission has applied for a grant of $176,000 to help put more deputies on the streets, more manpower for our community,” Turbeville said.

He noted that Weed & Seed has seen benefits in Lehigh. In his Power Point presentation, he showed where residential burglaries from 2008 to 2009 had dropped 7 percent. He said that business burglaries had dropped 70 percent in the same time period. However drug crimes had risen 34 percent, but said it was due to a time when local law enforcement swept through Lehigh and made a lot of arrests and shut down a lot of grow houses.

Turbeville gave credit to Larry Gutridge, who is chairman of the subcommittee that works with residents helping to establish Neighborhood Watches.

“We had eight when we started and by the end of 2009, we had more than 20 and now we have 28 active Neighborhood Watches. We still have many that are inactive, but we intend to work with those neighborhoods to get them involved,” he said.

In 2009, there were six community cleanups that lasted two hours each and Turbeville said some 10.4 tons of trash were picked up. He said the state puts a value on such work and it amounted to more than $9,000 that such volunteer work saved the taxpayers. If volunteers don’t do the cleanups, then the county does and there is a cost.

This year of 2010, there have already been three major cleanups and Turbeville said they have doubled the amount of volunteers. This year already, some 258 people have worked to pick up litter and trash along the roads with a savings to taxpayers of more than $39,000.

Turbeville gave credit to the Westminster neighborhood that has been very active in the Weed & Seed and its residents continue to take part in cleanups.

He said there are cleanups planned for July 25, Oct. 23 and Nov. 13 of this year.

“And remember these cleanups are only two hours long, but how these people work is amazing they have it down to a science,” he said.

Equipment such as gloves, pick-up sticks and other items are provided the volunteers and he said he has seen young parents with small children and grandparents and regular residents helping out.

“When you see the children, you know that is good because you can start them at an early age to realize we need to keep trash off our streets and yards,” he said.

He mentioned that the county has a $18 million grant to fix up old homes and that some $10 million of it is being earmarked for Lehigh.

“After these homes have been rehabbed they are sold. They are not public housing like HUD. They are affordable for the working class,” he said.

And with the rehabbing of these homes by the county, it is putting local people back to work in Lehigh.

Then Turbeville said he talked to a youth group at a middle and high school recently and asked them what the youngsters wanted in Lehigh.

“They told me they walk the streets because they can’t leave Lehigh and there are no sidewalks. They can’t get around Lehigh because there are no buses to provide transportation. Turbeville mentioned some activities the Sheriff’s Office is already sponsoring such as youth dances at Veterans Park.

“We have to do more for these kids. When I asked them if they would help us in the cleanups throughout the community, all said they would. I don’t think they have had the information about the Weed & Seed program and that is our fault in not getting the word out to them,” Turbeville said.

“We are going to have a Facebook page on the Internet which was recommended by the teens. That way we can stay in touch with them. Victory Christian Church has programs for the youth, but not all the teenagers can get there without transportation,” he said

“What really impresses me most though is that we have had 533 volunteers to work these cleanups. That is really impressive. It shows there are a lot of people in Lehigh who really care about their community,” he said.

“I just wanted to bring you all up to date about the new federal Dept. of Justice program and to let you know we are still a part of the new program and we are going to try to get grants for our community.

“And we need all the volunteers we can get,” he said. “It’s a great thing for Lehigh.”