With the end of budget season, Rollingwood City Council members spent a significant portion of their recent monthly meeting discussing new initiatives to help the city through the recent recession and drought.

The main ideas discussed involved revitalizing the neighborhood watch program, creating a local business encouragement initiative and creating a water conservation task force.

“October is the crime-heaviest month,” Alderwoman Shanthi Jayakumar said. “I’m not sure what we have already in place, but I make a motion to consider reviving the neighborhood watch program using the guidelines as advocated by the National Sheriff’s Association and in conjunction with the advice of the Rollingwood Police Department.”

The now-defunct program, initially spearheaded by Hazel Maxwell and John Lindell involves creating various sections in the neighborhood led by “block captains” who would be in close contact with Rollingwood Police Department.

“Our crime prevention officer, Sgt. Don Bowne, would love to meet and get this program reestablished,” Chief Dayne Pryor told the council.

Bowne and Jayakumar will meet in coming weeks to discuss the implementation of the program. In a similar fashion, Brian Nalle and Bill Hamilton will work together before the next regular council meeting to come up with a list of initiatives to foster local business growth.

“We could list city businesses in the classifieds in the Statesman and the Picayune; we could help get our businesses on city search,” Alderman Brian Nalle said. “We, as a city, could pursue opportunities like that. This is something that seems like an ad hoc committee of citizens, [Rollingwood Community Development Corporation] members, business owners could tackle.”

Alderman Bill Hamilton circulated a similar list of low-cost initiatives sent to him by CapCog, a local municipal government association. The two said they would give a presentation on their findings at the next regular city council meeting.

Utility Commission president Sue Bryant brought before council some potential guidelines to form a Water Conservation Task Force. All council members were on board with it but wanted another month to discuss what its goals and guidelines would include before approving it.