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Marion residents may soon have an opportunity to help keep their community safe as the Board of Aldermen weighs a plan to create a neighborhood watch program.

 

In a meeting Tuesday, Marion Police Department’s Sgt. Jimison Cloist said Marion isn’t a large town, but it’s too big for a single neighborhood watch group to cover on its own. Instead, he said, he broke the town down into small groups to make it easier on residents to participate.

 

Cloist said he also wants to include town officials in the neighborhood watch program, both to encourage residents to participate and to build connections between the town’s leadership and its citizens.

 

“I’d also like to get the aldermen to be a part of this,” he said. “This helps motivate you for election, know your people who put you in office. They might have complaints or concerns they want to address directly to you instead of to the police department or the mayor.”

 

Marion residents know what’s going on in their neighborhood, Cloist said, and building relationships with them makes the community stronger.

 

“You’d be surprised what they have to tell you, like road conditions, who’s sneaking around the neighborhood … This kind of stuff brings the community closer together, by having this kind of relationship with each other,” he said.

 

With a blueprint of the neighborhood watch program to review, Cloist asked aldermen to look over the plan and see if they see any changes or potential problems that should be addressed. If the plan is good and the program is something aldermen want to implement, he said it’s something they can discuss further at the next meeting.

 

Once approved by the Board of Aldermen, the town can begin recruiting residents to join their neighborhood group.

 

“Right now I want to present to the board, let the board look at it and see whether or not it’s going to be feasible or we need to make some changes or adjustments to take to the people,” he said. “Once we get this concrete, we’ll start in the neighborhoods by group, group one on down.”

 

In other business, the Board of Aldermen voted to adopt a resolution to apply for a recreational trail grant. If successful, the grant funds will be used to build a walking trail for Marion residents to use.

 

While initial plans for the walking trail called for it to be located behind Town Hall, Mayor Larry Gill said the town’s recent purchase of the neighboring property may change things. The board will have to discuss and see what it wants to do, he said.

 

“We’re gonna have to talk about it again. It probably changes with that land in the picture,” he said.