A new website allows Clackamas County residents to connect to their entire block with the click of a mouse to find a babysitter, recommend a plumber, organize a yard sale or alert neighbors about a suspect on the loose.

Police officers have been using a site called Nextdoor in Gladstone to introduce themselves to residents. Neighborhood activist and local Nextdoor founder Carole Winegarden sends her notes from Gladstone community meetings to other citizens on the site.

“I use it to post upcoming events, like a theater performance by Gladstone High School,” Winegarden said. “I can also send an alert as part of our effort to set up a neighborhood watch.”

Gladstone is on the forefront of the latest trend in hyper-local social networking. Of the 90 fledgling Nextdoor websites in Oregon, the North Clackamas area has also sprouted a Nextdoor Hillendale Oregon City, a Nextdoor Historic Milwaukie and a Nextdoor Howard Estates in Clackamas.

The website allows neighbors to “take control of their own destiny,” said Gladstone Police Officer Eric Graves, who, for example, hopes that the site will encourage neighbors to note license plates in front of a suspected drug house.

He noted that Gladstone has not been immune to the economic downturn, and its crime rate is on par with other parts of Clackamas County.

“Even if we can’t do any arrests right away, we can at least let suspects know that we’re watching them,” Graves said. “We like to prevent crime rather than react to it, and this type of website is all about prevention.”

United against crime

On Aug. 7, Gladstone will hold its National Night Out celebrations starting at 6 p.m., encouraging people to bring chairs into public areas and share a potluck with their neighbors. Night-out festivities are partnering with Gladstone’s Nextdoor website to increase the number of neighborhood watches in the city.

Gladstone’s National Night Out has grown from four neighborhoods in 2006 to 14 last year, and organizers hope that number will keep increasing. Beginning as a way to “take back” the night against crime, the event now primarily encourages cooperation among neighbors when there is a problem.

“It’s not just about preventing crime, but it’s also about bringing Gladstone together,” Winegarden said. “It’s not just a night to party, it’s a night to get people involved and engaged in working with their community.”

Having neighbors united against crime is Gladstone’s most effective tool, Graves said, because an officer driving for an entire shift can only cover each street in the city for about 30 seconds. Potential criminals, he argued, will move on to a less vigilant neighborhood if they see signs that neighbors are watching their movements.

“Social networking is so big right now, and it’s amazing that people are willing to be Facebook friends with someone they knew from high school, but they’re not willing to peek over the fence,” Graves said. “Hopefully this website helps change our attitudes about getting to know our community.”

Local networking

Winegarden, 42, has only been a resident of Gladstone for a year and a half, but in that time, she’s catapulted to a leader in community organizing.

In March, when Police Chief Jim Pryde was looking for a new leader for National Night Out, he turned to Winegarden, who only had to think about it for a week before accepting her role as chairwoman. In April, Officer Graves saw a link to Nextdoor and asked Winegarden if she’d be interested in starting it locally.

“I’m the type to get everyone together — I’m like an Australian shepherd,” Winegarden said. “Gladstone is very neighborly, but there’s a generation gap, and we also need to build a bridge between longtime residents and recent arrivals.”

Community leaders are the perfect people to start Nextdoor communities, because they’re the motivated ones, noted Nextdoor spokeswoman Kelsey Grady.

Winegarden and Graves like that people have to verify that they live within neighborhood boundaries to be eligible as a Nextdoor user. Nextdoor typically sends a postcard to an applicant’s house for the applicant to send back to Nextdoor’s headquarters in San Francisco.

“We’re a slow approach to building these communities, which we find really helpful so that people are sure they’re dealing with others really in their neighborhood,” Grady said.

Winegarden started with all of Gladstone, nearly 3,000 households, which could end up breaking into a “Gladstone East” and “Gladstone West” if citywide interest in the site grows. An “urgent alert” function allows users to send text messages to anyone signed up, but Grady discourages its use in all but the most dire circumstances so that the function keeps its value.

A tool intended for year-round use, Nextdoor just started last October and now counts 3,000 neighborhoods across 48 states with more than 10 members, and most of those have more than 100, Grady noted.

Nationally, 35 percent of postings relate to looking for contractor recommendations for a local babysitter, plumbers or dry cleaners. And 18 percent of posts operate as a neighborhood’s electronic classified ads of people selling and giving away items.