When the city launched the Downtown Denton Ambassador Program in January, many employees at More Fun Comics & Games were skeptical because they believed city leaders could use the nearly $1.5 million in a smarter way, said a employee for the Denton Record-Chronicle.

“When you see the huge check that the actual company wrote and the actual salaries of the ambassadors, it was a little frustrating,” the employee, who asked not to be identified, said Wednesday afternoon.

About nine months later, the employee said the ambassadors, who work as a hospitality and safety team, have been effective in picking up litter, but he is not sure how helpful they have been to tourists, although he said they feel welcome by ambassadors. , which “seem to be quite harmless”.

“Homeless people are still disturbing the peace,” the employee said. “It still happens.”

Last week, city staff released a progress report for the Downtown Ambassador Program covering the first five full months, from February to June, revealing a drop in referrals for people experiencing homelessness, an increased need for power washing and a lot of garbage that is collected. – over £11,000.

She points to the need for downtown visitors to embrace the message “Don’t mess with Texas,” the Texas Department of Transportation’s anti-litter campaign.

While the five-month progress report showed a drop in homeless citations — from 35 in February to seven in May and June — it doesn’t mean that people experiencing homelessness have disappeared from downtown or that some of those there are no recommendations. for the same person, said Courtney Douangdara, the city’s deputy director of community services.

So far in October, Douangdara said, there have been 96 submissions since October 29.

That number exceeds the 88 submissions made in February through June, according to the recent progress report.

“We do not track the number of people experiencing homelessness downtown and cannot say whether the homeless population has decreased in the area,” Douangdara said in a follow-up email Wednesday.

“Ambassadors regularly make connections and build relationships with the inner city homeless population. Staff have referred to the drop in referrals to homeless services in recent meetings with Block by Block management and in October so far referrals have increased significantly.”

It’s unclear how many of those referrals lead to people seeking help at the Denton Community Shelter on Loop 288 or other nonprofits, as Douangdara said those numbers also aren’t tracked.

In the progress report, staff said the ambassadors welcomed more than 43,000 visitors over the five-month period.

They also received favorable ratings from survey respondents, with 77% of local businesses saying they were satisfied with their opening hours – 7am ​​to 11pm daily – and 65% of visitors who were satisfied with their general safety when walking to and from vehicles. night, city spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said in an email Wednesday.

Jessica Tobias

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For the DRC

The favorable ratings come from a quarterly survey staff began conducting in August with local businesses and visitors.

“They do great when they come by and say hello, introduce themselves and ask if we need anything,” one business owner said of the ambassadors, in a quote from the progress report. “We have had the opportunity to interact with them on several occasions and they always approach us in a friendly and courteous manner.”

However, Sternbeck said those numbers are not a true representation of how the business community feels because only a handful of people responded to the surveys.

“There was very little response in the last quarter,” he said, adding that he plans to make a “big push” soon to increase engagement.

Patchouli Joe’s Books & Indulgences was one of the downtown businesses that responded to the survey, said Charlie Forester, manager at the bookstore.

Forester said the ambassadors were helpful in picking up trash outside and behind the business. They communicate well if Patchouli Joe’s has a problem, come to check in with Forester, and are responsive to business owners.

“They are a benefit to the Downtown Square,” Forester said.

Downtown Denton Ambassador Program started at the end of January as a two-year pilot program funded with nearly $1.5 million to provide cleaning and hospitality services and community assistance and engagement with people experiencing homelessness. It is run by Block by Block, a Louisville, Kentucky-based company that operates similar programs in inner cities across the country.

“It’s really a great addition to our city and a great showcase of our city,” Mayor Gerard Hudspeth told a small crowd of business and city leaders and reporters at a launch event in January. “I’m really excited about it.”

In March, city staff released a breakdown of how the new pilot program had gone. By March, downtown ambassadors had:

• Removed 462 stickers and 128 graffiti tags.
• We picked up 2,681 kilograms of garbage.
• Performed five safety escorts.
• 15 piles of feces and 20 areas of urine or vomit were cleaned up.
• 79 people experiencing homelessness were observed.
• They referred 29 people for homeless services.

But the breakdown did not list a data point for aggressive handling, as Block by Block does for its downtown Fort Worth program.

In March 2023, Matt Beard, director of public improvement districts for Fort Worth, said ambassadors there wear devices to record statistics and make maintenance requests.

Beard said that aggressive handling incidents in Fort Worth dropped 32 percent from 2021 to 2022.

“We closely monitor aggressive handling and actively discourage it through a variety of techniques,” Beard said in an email.

Courtesy art

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City of Denton

Douangdara said Wednesday that the downtown Denton program has recorded 10 cases of rough handling since late January, but that information was not available in reports provided to the Record-Chronicle.

“We provided the city ordinance on aggressively soliciting Block by Block when they were setting up programs in Denton, so they were aware of local regulations,” Douangdara wrote in an email. “The output is there to track if/when they need to call the police specifically for that purpose.”

October’s progress report didn’t go into the details of cleaning up bodily waste in the city center, but instead provided a more holistic breakdown, providing just two graphs for hospitality production and graffiti removal.

Statistics given for hospitality production included:

• Hospitality assistance, which includes giving directions or information, driver assistance, safety and umbrella escorts and other services: 137 in February, 234 in March, 124 in April, 84 in May and 134 in June.
• Business contacts: 189 in February, 169 in March, 134 in April, 95 in May and 131 in June.
• Referrals to homeless services: 35 in February, 23 in March, 16 in April, 7 in May and 7 in June.

Graffiti removal provided two category breakdowns:

• Graffiti written/painted: 180 in February, 167 in March, 31 in April, 39 in May and 109 in June.
• Bills and stickers: 524 in February, 355 in March, 231 in April, 145 in May and 97 in June.

On Wednesday morning, Douangdara shared a more detailed breakdown of what the ambassadors did between February and September. These details include:

• Litter (individual pieces collected): 111,966 total
• Biological hazard (feces): 190
• Hazardous cleaning (urine): 79
• Hazardous cleaning (vomiting): 94
• Driver assistance: 79
• safety escort: 38
• Homeless referrals for services: 124

“We’d like people to know that the city center ambassadors are available to help with a variety of things such as umbrella escorts in the rain, to and from car parks during opening hours and even help with tires flat or dead car batteries.” Douangdara wrote in her email.

“I am here to serve the community and downtown visitors can call or text the assistance hotline: 940-354-5767.”