Finding alternative activities for youths who roam the streets with nothing to do or who peddle drugs on street corners should be a top priority for the Weed and Seed program, members of a local steering committee said.

And it is.

The committee talked about looking at other ways to promote the Weed and Seed presence during a local steering committee meeting Tuesday night. About 12 people attended the meeting at the Good Hope Neighborhood Police Station.

The group talked about everything from offering speaker seminars or job-training seminars to providing hot lunches to children during the summer as a means of increasing the Weed and Seed presence in the targeted neighborhood.

The Weed and Seed target area is bounded by the Mississippi River on the east and West End Boulevard to the west, William Street on the north and Southern Expressway to the south.

The program is operated under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Drug traffic already has been reduced in the area thanks to Operation Safe Streets and other police activities, said Cpl. Charlie Herbst.

"There used to be 100 guys on the corner and now there are just 20," he said.

Adding a drug-free, gun-free zone sign to the corner of Middle and Good Hope streets is another way to show that Weed and Seed is concerned about the drug problem in the neighborhood, said Debra Hamilton, seeding coordinator.

Hamilton said a sign should be installed by week's end.

Hopefully it will send a message to the community, she said. "I've been driving around the target area talking to people who live there and finding out what's going on," she said.

But many people are still wary of visiting the Weed and Seed office because it is also home to the police substation. "I've got ideas about how to get them here," she said.

Some ideas would be to use the office lobby as a site for job interviews with local businesses or to offer a job-service bulletin board for people on the city's south side.

Weed and Seed's safe havens have applied for a grant through the Missouri Department of Health to offer hot lunches to children during the summer.

The target area has five designated safe havens: the Cape Girardeau Civic Center, Greater Dimension Church of God in Christ, the Salvation Army, May Greene School and House of Prayer Outreach Center.

All but one of the safe havens will participate in the program. The Cape Girardeau Civic Center doesn't have a kitchen to cook the meals but can offer staff support if necessary.

"They give you specific menus and guidelines that you have to operate the program," Hamilton said.

"And many of the safe havens, especially the churches, have donors in mind" to help defray the costs of the program.

In other business, the local Weed and Seed board agreed to set a limit of $5,000 for each mini-grant application.

"We don't want to be the sole source of funding," said Jo Boyer, a board member. For groups that might receive 100 percent of their funding through Weed and Seed during their first grant year, Hamilton will help them find other funding sources.