Midtown residents and business owners gathered at the Ethel MacLeod Hart Senior Center Saturday morning to meet with city officials and representatives from the police department to discuss what can be done about the rise in violence and rowdiness following Second Saturday.

For the first 30 minutes, more than 100 community members wrote on comment cards expressing concerns and proposing solutions. These were collected and sifted through for a seven-member "Safety Team" panel to address.

Though Councilman Steve Cohn was adamant that the shooting death of Victor Hugo Perez Zavala was not inherently a Second Saturday problem, it was the obvious impetus for the gathering. In his introductory remarks, Cohn spoke about the tragedy, and Captain Dana Matthes from the Sacramento Police Department gave an update on their search for the shooter.

The panel consisted of Matthes and Lt. Mike Bray from the police department, Rob Kerth from the Midtown Business Association, Vincene Jones from Neighborhood Services, Dean Fujimoto from the city's parking department, and Lori Ajax from Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Matthes addressed concerns about the curfew for teenagers. She said that last month they put the word out to local high schools that the department would be strictly enforcing the 10 p.m. curfew for people under age 18. She said they witnessed an improvement in this area over August's Second Saturday and they plan on continuing these efforts to see if more progress can be made for October and the long term.

Parking was a recurring issue. Fujimoto stressed that neighborhood action committees are welcomed to organize and submit different rules to his office for non-resident parking. Possible ordinance changes would prevent club-goers from parking in residential areas, which would help with loudness and violence complaints in the early hours of the morning. He stressed that parking rules in the city were not set in stone.

One recommendation from a Midtown resident was to limit non-resident parking to one hour, forcing late-night club-goers out of the neighborhoods and into parking structures and more public areas.

When a comment was read that asked for better management of the event, Kerth was wary. He conceded that better signage could help the participants but worried that if Second Saturday is over-managed, it will lose its "organic" nature. He said Second Saturday is an important day for our locally owned businesses, and he wants to avoid micro-managing.

He assured the public that the MBA is always trying to make Midtown a more fun and safer place for people to visit. He announced that his organization is partnering with the Lavender Angels to provide nightlife guides from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m every Friday and Saturday night between I and N streets and 17th and 24th streets.

Aja Uranga-Foster is in charge of the new partnership and said it should help with some of the issues raised in the community forum.

"The main thing is to help people get back to their car, or taxis, or their homes (quietly)," she said.

The program has a small core of paid staff but will rely heavily on volunteers. It will be piloted for three to four months and reassessed in February 2011. She didn't have a specific start date but said they will definitely be out in time for October's Second Saturday.

Although the Safety Team did their best to reassure the public they would do everything in their power to help Second Saturday, and Midtown in general, grow safely, some community members remained skeptical.

Susan Rabinovitz, jewelry designer and executive director of the Sacramento Artists Council, was mainly concerned about what she sees as a growing chaos. She said a possibility would be to put vendors in Fremont Park and live music at Caesar Chavez Park, there wouldn’t be so much crowd problems in one area.

"Segment it so that maybe there's not all this congestion," she said.

Reymond Walker writes the Second Saturday Blog with his daughter, Naomi Bingham-Walker, and he said he'll feel better when he sees real improvement coming from city management. He said the community forum was a great starting point, but he is worried there won't be more of them to keep the community involved.

"If it does happen again, in a sense that would be great," he said. "If it doesn't happen again I hope it's because we are seeing, and they've figured out, an outcome in the streets that reflects success."

Rabonovitz and Walker cited the Amgen Tour of California as a successful event that Second Saturday could organizationally aspire to.

"The community is so clearly aware of what to expect, what's going on," Walker said. "There are areas that are taped off, there's a lot of publicity. I know where to go, I know what's happening."

The meeting ended with encouraging words from Jones from Neighborhood Services and Councilman Cohn.

"I haven't seen one suggestion that said, 'No more Second Saturday,' and that's a good thing," Jones said.

"Midtown is the soul of Sacramento," Cohn said. "We got to keep it positive here … but that does mean growing pains, so we got to figure out how to do it right."

After the meeting, Cohn said community members can keep sending their concerns and proposals to the members of the Safety Panel. He said the members' individual e-mail addresses were the best point of contact.