Many of the neighborhood organizations and Block Watches in the Maryvale and West Phoenix area were started in the 1990's with the help of Neighborhood Services. Now their membership has been dwindling, and they struggle to make effective communication in the new population of Latino residents.

Our Heatherbrae Neighborhood is now 70 % Latino, and a half of them are monolingual Spanish speaking.

Neighborhood Services, Police, Firefighters, and Schools are struggling to find ways of reaching out to these residents and combating the deep seated mistrust of government agencies based on these residents' past experiences and actions of the state legislature and county sheriff.

Bilingual and cross-cultural education of government workers, as well as creative methods of recruiting these new residents to volunteer and participate must be made a priority of these city agencies.