FARGO (KFGO) – Downtown Fargo is thriving, but it’s also a work in progress. That was the theme of the final Downtown Download community meeting of the year.
Fargo Police Lieutenant Bill Ahlfeldt said officers issued 308 “quality of life” citations for violations like panhandling and public consumption – 15 more than they did in 2021 – despite having less officers downtown this year due to staffing challenges.
“These ‘quality of life’ issues – these little issues…if we enforce these, we stop larger issues from happening in the downtown area. So we focus on these quite a bit,” Ahlfeldt said.
Ahlfeldt says the plan is to add officers to the Fargo Police Department’s Community Trust team next year. He says the team, which will eventually be an 8-person one, will focus on the city’s higher call, higher crime areas, or neighborhoods with an identified community issue.
“We’re going to be looking for areas within the city that we can go and solve problems and engage with neighborhoods: take enforcement when needed but also dig to the bottom of what’s causing the issue and try and fix it with our community partners,” he said.
Ahlfelt said the team would start in downtown but work all over Fargo.
“It’s something that we could do, for example, with an area of the city that maybe has problem apartment buildings or maybe has a resident who is creating issues or an unsafe environment. We can go into that community, we can have community meetings, we can bring in the partners that are needed and try and solve that issue – not just with enforcement because we know enforcement isn’t the only way to do it – it’s in partnership and using resources that we have available,” he said.
The issue of street musicians and noise violations continues to be a source of contention downtown as well – Ahlfeldt says they are working on a solution.
“We want street performers in the downtown area. We want our downtown area to be a vibrant, fun place to go. We’re taking reasonable enforcement on the ordinances that are in the books, but we’re also working with many stakeholders over this winter with the goal of having revisions to our noise ordinance and our street performing ordinance by the spring,” he said.
The Downtown Download meetings are moving to a quarterly basis in 2023 – the next one will be in March.
