OF PEOPLE POWER AND PERSISTENCE

There was a time not too many years ago when venturing into the Chatmire
community was unthinkable for those who didn't live there. It was simply
too risky. Downright dangerous. Delivery people refused to deliver.
Ambulances would only answer calls with a police escort. Even the police
feared going into this community, especially after dark when their cars
routinely were pelted and their windows smashed.

Chatmire in the late 1990s was nothing less than a community under siege,
overrun with outsiders who brought drugs and accompanying violence to this
hamlet north of Dunnellon and enveloped in a sense of hopelessness. It's
reputation as a neighborhood, sadly, was simply the worst of worst in
Marion County.

Then a handful of residents decided they had had enough.

It took a better part of a decade, but the people of Chatmire can proudly
say they have reclaimed their community and, with it, a clear sense of
neighborhood pride. They put the exclamation point on that uplifting
reality Saturday with the dedication of the new Concerned Citizens for
Chatmire community center, an 800-square-foot facility that will provide a
meeting and gathering place, as well as after- school tutoring and
recreation for neighborhood youngsters.

The road traveled to this point, though, has been pocked with frustration
and rejection for the couple of dozen diehards who make up the core of the
Concerned Citizens. But through unwavering persistence and, ultimately, a
lock-arm partnership with the Marion County Sheriff's Office, Chatmire and
its residents have succeeded against long odds.

Led by Cathy Redd, Concerned Citizens began asking in 1997 for help in
ridding the neighborhood of outsiders who had turned a portion of it into a
virtual open-air drug supermarket. They knocked on every governmental door
they could find, only to be stonewalled or flatly turned away. Then Sheriff
Ed Dean stepped in.

Dean and former sheriff's Capt. Otto Wettstein recognized the periodic drug
sweeps and crime crackdowns were doing nothing to improve the
neighborhood's crime problem or, by extension, the neighborhood itself.
"Just putting people in jail wasn't solving the problem," Wettstein, now
retired, told us. "New people just took over."

So Wettstein, with a mandate from Dean, set about making a "change in the
environment" of Chatmire. The Concerned Citizens and other residents
rallied behind him and the Sheriff's Office.

"They were a small group of people that wanted to make a change, but they
didn't have the power to do it," Wettstein said. "When the sheriff's
department got involved, it had the power and the political clout to get
things going."

And get going they did. The combination of people power, police power and
persistence was a winning one. Wettstein brought in county Code
Enforcement, which had refused for years to regulate the neighborhood, and
spearheaded a neighborhood cleanup that generated 209 tons of junk and
garbage in one week. Next, he got authority to demolish a number of
derelict houses that were eyesores, health hazards and hiding places for
drug users and criminals. Finally, the coalition acquired a $25,000 grant
to build the community center out of the shell of a dilapidated house. The
project and this vision were further helped by John Curtis and his
Tri-County Builders, which generously put far more than $25,000 into the
project, Redd said.

The opening of the community center is a milestone for the Concerned
Citizens for Chatmire and, more importantly, the people of the
neighborhood, individually and collectively.

We proudly cheer the efforts and successes of Cathy Redd and her fellow
Concerned Citizens of Chatmire for, as Redd put it as Saturday's ceremony,
the "blood, sweat and tears behind it." And we salute Dean, Wettstein and
the other governmental officials who in the end answered Chatmire's pleas
for help. Like Wettstein told us, cleaning up a community takes more than
arrests and police patrols. It takes changing the environment, physically
and otherwise.

That's the blessing that has happened and is happening in Chatmire. It is a
truly feel-good story about people and the people's government embracing a
vision and uniting for the good of a neighborhood, and it's a success story
that should give other neighborhoods fighting against bad elements real hope.